


After the War

by Mephistophelia



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Angst, Anxiety, Canon Era, Canon Incest, Further Tags as events warrant, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, More Kuragincest than I planned don't @ me there either, Multi, My knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars is sketchy at best don't @ me, Panic Attacks, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, This is really dark but honestly I have been in a Bit of a Mood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-02-28 23:55:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 18
Words: 53,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13282557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mephistophelia/pseuds/Mephistophelia
Summary: Anatole Kuragin died in battle, or so they said. When Fedya liberates a camp of Russian prisoners after the French surrender, it turns out they were wrong. But the truth isn’t much easier to take.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey so, this fic is real dark. I write angst the way Pierre thinks about killing Napoleon: without understanding why, but loudly and with conviction.
> 
> There's some probably triggering content in here, although I am trying my best to be mindful and not gratuitously explicit. Along with tags, I'll try to flag things as they arise.
> 
> Also, I have a few chapters written but I'm not done and my semester starts in a week, so updates are hazy to predict?
> 
> Now that I've apologized a lot, here's a thing, and your feedback is life.

Not for the first time, Fedya thanked God he’d never have to face General Kutuzov in the field. The towering Russian looked like a tsar himself. He stood tall and regal on the edge of the French camp, his strong arms folded in the expanse of his fur coat. The anger radiated from his broad shoulders in waves. Small wonder the French officer standing opposite him cowered. Opposing Kutuzov was like opposing a mountain. And in any case, the French army had nothing left to fight with.

After years of war, endless dragging battles and thousands of losses on both sides, it was over. France had lost. Russia had won. Nothing remained now but the terms, which Kutuzov had set, and which the French would now have to hear.

Fedya stood beside Kutuzov, looking out over the expanse of French soldiers who had assembled for the delivery of the ceasefire. Fedya had received commendation after commendation in the war, shooting up the ranks from junior corporal to full-blooded captain in less than a year. He had enough medals to weight his shoulders at social events for the rest of his life. It wasn’t much to be proud of—Fedya had done nothing more than what he’d been born to do. Boldness ran in his blood, a disregard for fear and personal safety. In peacetime, his personality made him a rakehell and a gambler; in war, it made him a hero. He bore the Army's honors as he bore Moscow's insults: with the purest indifference. Captain or corporal, it didn’t matter. The war was over, and Russia had won. The French were left now to suffer what the Russians had, all these years. Fedya looked out at the junior officers behind the French general, ragged men in too-thin blue uniforms, and bit his tongue to tamp down a smile.

It served the French right. With everything they’d taken from him. All the friends. All the brothers. And the man who had been both, friend and brother, and more, the only man Fedya had ever really loved—

But no time for that now.

Kutuzov cleared his throat, and Fedya stood up straighter, squaring his shoulders at attention. The final few minutes of war. In the days and weeks to come, there would be time to think of Anatole Kuragin, his best friend, his lover, whose body had never been recovered after Borodino. For now, he needed to hold strong, and save face.

“You have heard the terms,” Kutuzov said to the French general, a heavily mustached old soldier named Davout. “I presume you agree?”

Davout nodded, his eyes still on the snow. In disgrace, he looked like a dog kicked in the ribs. A far cry from the cocky commander on his plumed charger, mere months ago. It made Fedya’s heart sing to see it.

“Yes, monsieur,” Davout said.

“Yes, _General_.”

“Yes, General,” Davout echoed.

“Repeat them,” Kutuzov said—Fedya could hear the smirk in the words. “I like to hear my orders in your voice.”

“You take the field, we retreat to Poland, Moscow is left untouched,” Davout murmured. His voice was barely audible, but the shame rising in his face was satisfaction enough. “We will convey your orders to the Emperor, who will declare Russia a free nation.”

“And our prisoners,” Kutuzov said coldly. “The safe return of all Russian prisoners. That’s part of the deal.”

Davout’s shame burned with something close to anger. If he could have given the order to execute all Russian prisoners twenty minutes ago, he would have done it. But with his back against the wall like this, he could do nothing but concede. “Yes, General,” he said. “Lieutenant Montparnasse will escort your officers to them.”

Fedya could have cut out the Frenchman’s tongue for the reluctance in his voice. How dare they take Russian soldiers prisoner at all? The French didn’t have a scrap of humanity. If the war had proven anything, it had proven that. They’d leave prisoners to starve in the snow like dogs.

Kutuzov, sensing the way Fedya bristled for action, nodded at Davout’s words. “Dolokhov,” he said. “Denisov. Kuznetsov. See to the safe return of our men.”

The three officers saluted sharply. “Yes, General,” they said, and set off after the French lieutenant.

The camp looked like a graveyard already. Ragged tents and smoldering fires, a few poorly built cabins with gaps in the wood for the frigid winter air to howl through. Fedya shivered as the lieutenant led them to the fort on the outskirts of camp. The snow beneath his boots sounded like the crunching of bone. The fort was a formidable-looking building, thick stone and high guard towers, built by the Russians some fifty years before. The French had occupied it for the better part of two years. Now, it was their last remaining stronghold in the country. One that would slip from their hands in minutes. Fedya’s steps echoed through the deserted halls as they entered, following the lieutenant. He could see his breath, thick and opaque, before him.

They descended a flight of stairs into the tunneled-in stronghold of the fort. The lieutenant led them to a door at the far end of the hall, one wreathed in shadows. Fedya had to squint to feel secure in his footing. The lieutenant glanced back at the three Russian officers behind him and shivered.

“Get on with it,” Denisov said, reaching for his saber.

The Frenchman flinched, then reached for the keys in his pocket. He unlocked the door with hands that shook either from cold or fear. Then, after a moment, he stepped into the room, Dolokhov following close behind.

It was hell inside. Black and endless. No furniture, no warmth, no fire, no window. A single crack of light splintered across the packed-earth floor from a chink between the stones, near the ceiling. Through the one-inch gap, Fedya could see blades of grass, icy with frost. It was as cold inside the room as out. Fedya wouldn’t have stored surplus food in a room like this, let alone living men.

But as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could see them.

His breath caught. He thought he might be sick.

Russian soldiers, a half dozen of them. They had been stripped of most of their uniforms—anything that could keep a man warm had been pulled from their bodies and handed to the French. No overcoats, no jackets, no gloves, no shoes. Shivering and thin, left only in shirtsleeves and trousers, torn, dirty, bloodstained. They had been chained to the wall, hands pinned above their heads in iron rings driven into the stone, tight enough to rub the skin raw. One man had been beaten not long before. Fedya could hear the catch of his breath, high and piercing through the otherwise silence.

Fedya’s hands shook. He could have stabbed the French lieutenant through the throat.

“This is all of them?” he heard Denisov say.

The lieutenant shook his head. “The first room,” he said. “There are five others.”

“You dog,” Fedya snarled. “They’re men. How _dare_ you.”

At the sound of Fedya’s voice, one of the men looked up. His gaze sharpening, out of the unfocused stare he had been directing at the ground. This one near the corner of the room, far from the door. A tall man, fair-haired and gaunt. His blue eyes piercing, and locked on Fedya.

Those eyes.

Fedya would have known those eyes anywhere.

“Oh Jesus,” he whispered.

He crossed the room and crouched in front of Anatole, no longer breathing.

Anatole’s body was all angles now, as if his silhouette had been cut with an ice pick. His face was filthy and shadowed, and a long narrow cut, probably infected, sliced from his left eyebrow down to his jawline. After who knew how long in prison, his once-soft hair now looked dull and brittle as straw. His handsome mouth had gone tight and cold. His sharp knees were drawn in toward his chest, and his fingers, above the cuffs, twitched with invisible electricity like an old man’s.

But there was no mistaking him.

Fedya pressed one trembling hand against Anatole’s cheek. Anatole flinched and turned away, until his other cheek was flush against the wall. Fedya took his hand back.

“I thought you were dead,” Fedya whispered.

“I might be,” Anatole said.

“Dolokhov,” Denisov said, from behind Fedya.

“Give me the keys,” Fedya said to the lieutenant, without looking away from Anatole. He held out his hand expectantly.

“I…” the lieutenant protested.

Fedya’s head snapped to look at him, eyes blazing. “Give me,” he snarled, “the _fucking_ keys.”

The lieutenant pressed a ring of keys into Fedya’s hand and slunk back.

“Dolokhov,” Denisov said again. “There are others—”

“I won’t leave him,” Fedya said. without looking away from Anatole. “We’ll send more men back for the others.”

It was impractical to the point of cruelty. These men needed his help, they all did. But Fedya had stopped thinking rationally. Had stopped thinking at all. His hands were already fitting the key into the cuffs keeping Anatole’s wrists against the wall. As the iron gave, Anatole’s arms fell heavy to his sides, inexorable, like a suicide plunge. Fedya bit his lower lip, then gently massaged Anatole’s wrists, encouraging feeling back into the blistered skin. Anatole whimpered in pain and tried to pull his arm away.

“It’s all right,” Fedya murmured, still chafing against Anatole’s hands. “It’s all right.”

He didn’t know this for sure. The circulation had long gone, and Anatole’s hands were so cold it almost hurt Fedya to touch them.

“Here,” Fedya said, and stripped off his own coat, spreading the thick green fabric over Anatole’s shoulders. Anatole clung to it like a drowning man. The first defense he’d had against the cold in who knew how long.

“Can you stand, Tolya?” Fedya asked.

Anatole gritted his teeth, wincing as he shifted his legs. Even while sitting, his knees trembled. He pressed both hands against the wall, pushing himself up.

“I… _shit,_ ” he hissed, and his legs gave out beneath him.

Fedya caught Anatole beneath one arm just in time, supporting his weight across his shoulders. His weight. Christ. Anatole barely weighed anything.

“No, don’t try that,” Fedya said. “Hold on—”

He braced one hand behind Anatole’s shoulders, slid the other beneath his knees, and lifted. Effortless. He cradled Anatole’s body in his arms with as much strain as lifting an infant. Within the cocoon of the coat, Anatole tensed instantly. Freezing and edgy, like a hunted animal.

“Please,” Anatole stammered, and tried to twist away. “No, don’t, I don’t want—”

“It’s all right,” Fedya said, almost crooning it. “It’s just me. It’s Dolokhov. It’s Fedya. You’re safe. I’m taking you home.”

Anatole was too weak to sustain his own fear for long. He closed his eyes and turned his head toward Fedya, burying his face in Fedya’s shoulder. His breathing was too shallow. His body felt cold and hollow, a man made of snow.

Fedya swallowed his fear, swallowed his panic, pushed it all aside. Anatole needed him now. Later, when Anatole didn’t need him, he could allow himself to feel this. For now, he carried Anatole, as gently as he could, toward the Russian camp, toward his own tent—near the spot where, later that day, the train would arrive to take the victorious Imperial Army back to Moscow.

If this was what victory felt like, Fedya shuddered to imagine a loss.


	2. Chapter 2

The train to Moscow felt interminable. Fedya could terrify any member of the Imperial Army with nothing but a look, and in his current mood, no one had dared contradict him when he demanded a private compartment. The venom in his voice couldn’t have been further from the gentleness of his arms, as he carried Anatole into the train and lay him across the opposite seat. Barely conscious to begin with, Anatole fell asleep almost the moment his shoulders touched the leather. The train was heated, and Fedya had scrounged up the remains of another uniform for him back at camp. Boots two sizes too big, a jacket that dwarfed him, but better than nothing. Fedya spread his coat back over Anatole, too, covering him like a blanket.

Despite it all, Anatole never stopped shivering.

Fedya himself barely felt the cold, or anything else.

He sat leaning forward, hands clasped between his knees, and watched Anatole sleep for hours. Every rise and fall of Anatole’s chest beneath the coat felt like a miracle.

Anatole had been dead. Fedya had gone through the war mourning Anatole for six months, or trying not to mourn, not to think or feel. The rage that made him a hero in the last gasp of the war had all been driven by vengeance. The French had killed Anatole, and so Fedya would kill them, kill them all, every last man and boy who wore their uniform. No mercy, no quarter. They’d shown no mercy to the man he loved. Anatole hadn’t given a damn about the war, but Fedya would win it for him. He was a soldier. What else could he do but fight?

And now the war was over, and Anatole was alive. Somehow.

Fedya should have been there, to protect him. He’d never forgive himself for letting this happen. But it was over now. And Fedya, God as his witness, would never anyone else hurt this man. Never again.

At last, the train pulled into the station with a creak and a hiss of steam. Jolted out of sleep by the jerk of the train, Anatole opened his eyes. Half-awake at best.

“We’re here,” Fedya said. “We’re home.”

His first instinct was to lift Anatole again and carry him to a carriage, but something stopped him. He remembered the way Anatole had tensed in his arms, unnerved by being held. Besides, it was the wrong way, for a return to society and peace. The Anatole Fedya knew would never have tolerated it. He entered rooms and cities as if every step were a performance worth paying for.

The last train they’d taken together, Anatole had alighted onto the platform like an actor taking center stage, every movement calculated to impress. And it worked—three women had propositioned him during the two-minute walk to retrieve their luggage. Fedya had watched from the platform, not without bitterness, as Anatole flirted shamelessly with a well-dressed woman who later proved to be the wife of the Foreign Minister. Fedya forgave him at once, of course. Anatole’s apology, in the drive away from the station, had been highly convincing. They’d had to apologize to the driver, when they got out, for ruining the back of the carriage.

It was petty and vain, but petty and vain were two things Anatole did better than anyone. He could be carried at camp, very well, where no one knew him. But not here, in Moscow, the city he’d once played so masterfully. No, here in Moscow he’d want to walk, no matter what.

“Here,” Fedya said, and slipped his shoulder beneath one of Anatole’s arms. “Lean on me. There you go.”

The walk from the compartment to the platform, through the station, and out to the street was a short one. Less than three hundred yards. Before the war, Anatole could have run that distance in a minute. Now, it took them ten, and drained everything that remained of Anatole’s strength. Fortunately, no one fought Fedya for the first carriage standing in wait on the curb. He helped Anatole into the back, then climbed in himself.

Anatole sagged back against the seat and closed his eyes, breathing hard. In a moment, he was asleep again.

“Where to?” said the driver, over his shoulder.

Fedya gave him the address, gripping Anatole’s hand tight. “Hurry,” he said.

They reached Fedya’s flat in less than a quarter hour. A small room, on the third story of an old building in the south side of the city. It had stood unoccupied for months while Fedya was away at the front, but a thin level of dust wasn’t enough to dissuade Fedya from bringing Anatole in. He would be safe here. He could rest here.

Fedya carried Anatole—still sleeping—up the stairs, so easily he was barely winded when he reached the landing. He laid Anatole in the bed, drawing the blankets up around his shoulders. Then he stood there a moment, watching.

It was unsettling, seeing Anatole like this. The Anatole Fedya loved did not look like this. Was not quiet, was not still, barely slept. That Anatole was always moving, talking almost too fast to be understood, laughing about something stupid, preening and flirting with anyone alive, making three bad decisions by the time ordinary people had finished breakfast. And now, seeing him here, shrunken and trembling, breathing raggedly, shivering in borrowed clothes. It was like looking at a stranger.

Fedya shook his head, forcing himself back into action. He threw open the door to his flat and shouted into the hall.

“Mitya!”

The boy appeared a moment later. A rough-looking youth of fifteen who lived downstairs, and who was more than willing to run errands for three kopeks. He stared at Fedya from beneath a flop of too-long brown hair, stunned.

“Captain Dolokhov,” the boy said. “You’re home?”

“Only just,” Fedya said. “I need you to take some messages for me.”

The boy nodded and held out his hand, to take the small handful of change Fedya passed him. Loyalty: a valuable quality, and a good value for the price. “Anything you need.”

“First, run to Doctor Levin. You know where his office is?”

“Yes, sir. By the Bolshoi.”

“Good boy. Tell him a man here needs his attention at once. At _once_ , tell him.”

Mitya’s eyes widened. “Are you all right, sir?”

Fedya waved a hand. “Fine. It’s not for me. Can you do that?”

“Yes, sir. Doctor Levin. What else?”

“Do you know where Count Pyotr Bezukhov lives?”

Mitya frowned. “I don’t know the name, sir.”

Of course not. Why would he? Mitya and Pierre weren’t going to run into one another at the club, or pay calls to the same families. “Number thirty-nine Petrovka Boulevard. Across the street from the Metropole. Big, dark brick house, blue curtains across the front windows. Did you get that?”

“Yes, sir. Thirty-nine Petrovka, the Metropole. What should I tell the count?”

“Tell the count’s wife I need to see her,” Fedya said, turning back into the room.

Mitya did not move. “Will the countess come, sir?” he asked.

A good question. Most countesses wouldn’t deign to come to a glorified tenament like this, a series of rooms packed with disreputable people who kept odd hours and bad company. But Hélène wasn’t just any countess. If Mitya had known her, he wouldn’t have asked.

“Tell her Fedya Dolokhov needs her urgently. Say her brother is here. She’ll come.”

 

* * *

 

She did.

In the space of twenty minutes, the door to Fedya’s flat flung open and smashed against the opposite wall. Fedya, sitting on the end of the bed near Anatole’s feet, flinched.

“I know you’re a beast, Dolokhov,” Hélène said, striding into the room. “But that was cruel, even for you.”

Her coat hung open, revealing an expensive-looking gown in rich blue satin and an elegant string of pearls. As if she’d been interrupted just before leaving for the opera, or hosting an elaborate dinner party. The anger in her eyes clashed spectacularly with the refinement of her dress.

“Lena,” he said.

“I’d have come, you know,” she said, and tossed her fur coat to the floor. “There was no need to joke about him like that. Have a little _fucking_ respect.”

Fedya said nothing. When he stood up, Hélène could see Anatole, curled up in the bed.

She stifled a small scream with one hand.

He had burrowed deep into the blankets, covered up to the tip of his nose. Though Fedya had washed the worst of the dirt from Anatole’s face and hands, his hair was filthy, and the scar along his cheek looked troublingly raw. He barely looked like himself. Really, it might have been any soldier stumbled into Fedya’s flat. But Hélène could have identified her brother by seeing his shadow in a darkened room.

“Toto,” she breathed, and pushed past Fedya as if he weren’t there.

She sat on the edge of the bed, her hip near Anatole’s chest. One hand still covered her mouth. The other edged the blanket back, down to his shoulders. She stared into his face as if seeing a miracle and a ghost at once.

“He’s dead,” she said. “He died at Borodino. They told me. He’s dead.”

“Feel his heart, Lena,” Fedya said. “Feel how it beats.” He leaned against the wall near the bed. “He was a prisoner. I freed him after the cease-fire.”

Hélène reached out a hand and pressed her palm gently to Anatole’s chest, letting his heartbeat shiver through her. In his sleep, he yelped and cringed away as if she’d struck him. Hélène drew back her hand.

“What did they do to him?” she whispered.

Fedya shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t asked him anything. He’s been…he’s been like this.”

“He needs a doctor,” Hélène said, almost accusing.

“I’ve sent for one,” Fedya said. “You beat him here.”

Hélène nodded. She continued nodding long after it made sense to nod.

“I told Mama I would protect him,” she said, shellshocked. “I was supposed to keep him safe. I was his sister.”

Fedya didn’t say anything about the way Hélène had gotten stuck in the past tense. He’d been using it himself for months now. It was a hard habit to shake.

“Captain Dolokhov?” said a man’s voice from the doorway.

Fedya and Hélène turned. Doctor Levin stood in the doorway, a small man with a pinstriped waistcoat and a thick mustache. He held his medical bag in one hand, and the hair he’d combed over to hide his bald spot had been blown askew in his haste.

The doctor’s step faltered slightly when he saw Anatole, but he recovered in an instant. Levin took the blanket in one hand and pulled it back, to examine Anatole fully. Anatole’s body curled tighter on itself, scrambling for the warmth he had suddenly lost. The doctor sucked his teeth, then turned to Fedya and Hélène.

“Prince Anatole Kuragin, unless I’m mistaken?” he said.

Fedya nodded. “You know him?”

“I believe he slept with my daughter’s governess,” Levin said blandly.

Hélène’s laugh carried more than a touch of hysterics. “No doubt.”

“How long has he been this way?” Levin asked, pushing his surprise aside.

“I don’t know,” Fedya said. “Could be months. I called as soon as I could.”

Levin nodded. “I need to perform a full examination,” he said. “I would ask you, in that time, to wait outside. I’ll call for you as soon as I’ve finished.”

“I’m not leaving—” Hélène began.

“We’ll be right outside,” Fedya said.

He steered Hélène into the hall, almost pushing her through the door by the small of her back. Levin closed the door after them. Hélène and Fedya were left standing, alone and silent, in the hallway, staring at the closed door.

Hélène whirled to glare at Fedya, her eyes flashing. “I can’t leave him,” she said. “Not again. How dare you.”

Fedya bit his lip, then laid one hand on her shoulder. “Lena,” he began.

They had been intimate, Fedya and Hélène, before the war. In the way everyone in Moscow thought, but more than that, too. He knew her, and she him, in ways few did. But she had never felt comfortable enough to break in front of him. She’d always kept her mask close at hand, shielding her emotions whenever they became too sharp, too much.

She didn’t do that now.

Hélène sank to the floor, holding her head in both hands. The sob that escaped her was sharp and short, and stood alone. Fedya had heard bayoneted soldiers make the same sound on the field. She would not weep, not Hélène, no. But somehow, the single sob was worse. Something in her had shattered, and Fedya didn’t know how to help her put it back together. Not when the same thing was broken in himself.

So he didn’t try to put it together. Instead, he held her close, letting her seek safety in his arms. She allowed it only a minute, before releasing him and wiping away the tears that hadn’t fallen. Fedya sat beside her, a few inches separating his knees from hers.

They sat there while seconds turned to minutes, saying nothing, waiting for the doctor.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back, bearing my semi-regular delivery of incurable sadness.
> 
> (Minor TW: mention of rape.)

Three-quarters of an hour later, Levin opened the door.

“Captain,” he began.

Fedya stood. He turned to offer his hand to Hélène, but she had already stood on her own and beat him into the room. As he followed, she sat again at Anatole’s bedside, taking his hand in hers. Anatole slept on his back, covered again by the blankets. He looked paler now than before, somehow. Levin had cleaned the cut along his cheek. Though the wound was still pink, the crust of infection had gone. Fedya should have done that, on the train to Moscow. He hated himself, for letting even that small twinge of pain continue one hour more than needed.

Hélène traced small circles on the back of Anatole’s palm with the meditative quality of a nun praying the rosary. Fedya stood to the side, feeling useless.

“Will he be all right?” Fedya asked.

Levin paused. He sat in the chair beside Anatole’s bed and rested his hands on his knees.

“I asked you a question,” Fedya said.

“Yes,” Levin said, “I believe the prince will recover. He’s survived the worst, after all. Was he lucid when you…found him?”

“Yes,” Fedya said. “He recognized me. I think he knows where he is.”

“Good,” Levin said. “That’s good. But, there’s something I should…”

“Yes?” Fedya snapped. For God’s sake, the man had just said Anatole would be all right, what was he hedging over? That was the only important thing. Whatever care was needed, Fedya would give it, Hélène would give it, between the two of them they’d find a way to pay for it. As long as there was hope.

Levin glanced at his shoes. “Where was the prince when you found him, Captain?”

“He was a prisoner,” Fedya said. “In the French camp.”

Levin closed his eyes. “Ah,” he said, as though this confirmed something. “I see. Perhaps we might speak without Madame present—”

“He’s my brother,” Hélène said. “If you want me to leave, you’ll have to drag me out.”

“I wouldn’t press your luck, doctor,” Fedya said, silencing his nerves with irony. “Madame is very difficult to move.”

The doctor sighed, then cracked his back. When he spoke, his words carried the strange sense of not being addressed to anyone at all.

“The prince’s condition is to be expected, given his circumstances,” he said. “Malnourishment and dehydration. Fever, though not so bad as I feared. A touch of fluid in the lungs. The cold troubles him, but he’s avoided frostbite, by some miracle. Nothing requiring amputation, so long as he’s kept warm.”

“Of course,” Fedya said.

Hélène gripped Anatole’s hand as if the whole arm might disappear.

“But in addition,” Levin said, and coughed, with a look at Hélène. “In addition, and this is why I asked, Captain, my examination indicated signs of, er, signs of trauma.”

Fedya folded his arms. It was that or punch the doctor in the nose. Was the man constitutionally incapable of giving a straight answer? Doctors on the field didn’t have time to mince words. Terse, blunt orders— _the wound’s gone septic, Captain, hand me the saw and get out._ That was what Fedya needed. Orders. What to do next. Not this dancing round the question.

“He was a prisoner, doctor,” Fedya said. “I expect that’s trauma enough.”

“That’s not quite what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean? What kind of trauma?”

The doctor gritted his teeth, then blurted out the words in a rush. “Sexual trauma, Captain.”

The room fell silent. Fedya could hear the soft wave of Anatole’s breath. He could hear his own heart beat.

“Sexual trauma,” Hélène repeated, from a great distance.

“Yes, madame,” the doctor said. “His injuries suggest incidents of repeated, forced penetration. Er, of the—”

“Yes,” Fedya said. “All right.”

The room now seemed too small, and crushingly hot. The floor tilted drunkenly beneath his feet, like a ship at sea. He gripped the windowsill hard. As if it hadn’t been enough. As if they’d needed this. He could hear it, despite his efforts to shut it out, the sound of Anatole’s voice as Fedya lifted him out of the darkened cell, _please don’t, I don’t want, please,_ and the distant ghost of a scream, pulled from his imagination but truer than anything he’d ever heard, and those dogs had dared to hurt Anatole, his Anatole, they had hurt him and Fedya hadn’t been there and God he wanted to _kill something_ —

“When he wakes,” Levin went on, regaining his confidence, “I would give him some distance at first. Physically. Unexpected contact may alarm him.”

Hélène let go of Anatole’s hand.

“Best to let him set the tone,” Levin said, “with anything related to the, to the issue. Give him control. The experience is different for everyone, of course, but I generally advise erring on the side of caution.”

Silence stretched another long moment. Then Hélène stood up. Not for the first time, Fedya was in awe of her self-possession. If she felt anything at all—and Fedya knew she did, the echo of that sob still haunted him—she had pushed it so far beneath the surface that anyone who didn’t know her would have thought her heartless. Would have thought Anatole was a stranger to her. Though not tall, she seemed to tower, her pearls and scoop-backed gown not inappropriate but regal. It was unsettling, almost, to see how good of a liar she was.

“Thank you, doctor,” she said.

Levin smiled and took her hand. “Give him time, Madame,” he said. “I’ll call again tomorrow. In the meantime, keep him warm. Light a fire. I don’t expect him to wake before I return, but if he does, give him water, soup or broth if he can manage it. Start small. Send for me earlier, if needed.”

“I understand perfectly,” Hélène said, and showed the doctor out.

Only when she was alone with Fedya did Hélène allow the mask to fall. And even then, only for a moment.

 

* * *

  

Anatole slept the rest of the day, and all through the night. Nearly thirty hours, all told, but Fedya couldn’t grudge him that. Let him sleep, if he could. In some ways, it was easier.

Hélène never left his bedside, never closed her own eyes, though there was nothing for her to do. At last, at daybreak, Fedya sent her home. Told her to wash and get something to eat, and to find warmer clothes for Anatole at the house. She protested until she ran out of words to protest and the growling of her empty stomach startled both of them. Then, exasperated and thwarted, Hélène bolted from the room, promising to return as soon as she could.

Half an hour after she left, Anatole woke.

Lying on his back still, he shifted beneath the blankets, pulling them tighter around him. His eyelids twitched, shrugging off a dream. Then the full weight of consciousness dropped.

He sat bolt upright with a cry, as if someone had pressed a flaming brand to his spine.

Eyes wild. Confused. Afraid.

Somehow, utterly alone.

Fedya longed to embrace him. To shield him from everything, as he should have done from the first. As he’d promised himself he would. Remembering Levin’s words, Fedya stayed in the chair beside the bed. He smiled, and tried to look as if he meant it.

“It’s all right,” he said.

Anatole turned toward the sound of Fedya’s voice. He stared at Fedya, still in uniform, pistol belted and forgotten at his waist.

Fedya wanted the look in Anatole’s eyes to be relief.

It wasn’t.

It was terror.

Fedya raised both his hands, empty, palms outward. “It’s all right,” he said again. “It’s only me.”

Slowly, the fear ebbed. Anatole closed his eyes and let out a long breath. He leaned back against the headboard. “Fedya,” he said.

Fedya could have wept. To hear his name again, in Anatole’s voice. Even weakened and soft like it was now, it was a gift. One he thought he’d lost forever.

“Yes,” he said. “I missed you.”

“Where—”

“Moscow. In my flat. You’re safe.”

“Moscow,” Anatole repeated. He opened his eyes, though his head still slumped against the headboard. “I don’t remember that.”

“No, well, you wouldn’t,” Fedya said, fighting a losing war to keep his voice conversational. “You slept on the train. You’ve been here about a day. Hélène has barely left your side.”

Anatole sat up at that. He turned his head, taking in the full extent of the room. “Where is she?”

“I sent her home to get some rest,” Fedya said. “She’ll be back any minute.”

Anatole nodded. Fedya felt a sentence start in the back of his own throat, _the war is over, Tolya, you’re safe, we’ve won,_ but he swallowed it down. Anatole didn’t care about that, never had. He’d displayed an artist’s finesse in dodging the fighting, serving as an attaché or an adjutant for as long as he could manage it, until the draft tightened its fist and dragged him to the field. He would get no satisfaction in knowing the Russian army had won. Only the ache of remembering what that victory had cost.

“How do you feel?” Fedya asked instead. “Could you eat, do you think?”

Anatole’s laugh sounded like a cough, or a punch to the throat. His eyes seemed too wide in his thin face. Something haunted in that stare. Something angry. “Don’t,” he said.

“Don’t what?”

“Taunt me. Not you.”

Fedya wanted to scream. He wanted to punch a fist through the wall. To burn the whole city to the ground, for allowing this to happen to the man he loved. For making Anatole believe no one would offer him comfort except as a form of torment. Instead, Fedya swallowed his anger, along with the tears building from God knew where, and spoke softly.

“I’m not,” he said. “You’re free. If you’re hungry, you can eat. If you’re tired, you can sleep. Ask for what you need, and you’ll get it. I promise.”

Anatole nodded. Fedya was not at all sure the nod indicated belief.

“Now,” Fedya said, with faux-assurance, “the doctor says you have to start slow. Maybe bone broth, for now. Something warm?”

“All right,” Anatole said. His hands had tightened over the blankets, though Fedya could still see the tremors spasming through his fingers. “Fedya, can you—” He broke off, as if someone had clamped a hand over his mouth.

“Can I what?” Fedya prompted.

Anatole flinched. “Nothing. Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Tolya, you can ask. Can I what?”

Anatole bit his lip, then drew in a long breath before speaking. “Can you move back? A little. Until Lena comes.”

Fedya would kill them, the men who had done this. He would kill them all, one by one.

But the war was over, and there was no one left to kill. He would have to do this another way.

He stood and pushed the chair back three feet, widening the space between himself and the bed. Then, thinking ahead, he removed the pistol from his belt with broad, obvious gestures. Anatole tensed, drawing back. The catch of his breath sounded like the click of a hammer. Fedya raised one hand, spreading the fingers wide. No threat. No intent to shoot. With the other, he placed the gun in the dresser behind him and closed the drawer with a snap. Some of the stiffness melted from Anatole’s shoulders.

“Better?” Fedya asked.

He nodded. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I can help better if you ask for what you need.”

In a few minutes, Mitya brought up a mug of broth, which he held in both hands as he stared warily at Anatole. Remembering, perhaps, how many times this tall, pale soldier had stumbled up the steps of this building with Fedya on his arm, their drunk laughter too loud, and the sounds that had drifted down through the floorboards after they both closed the door. Seeing, as Fedya was seeing, the difference.

“Mitya,” Fedya prompted.

The boy jumped, then nodded. “Can you hold this, sir?” he asked.

Anatole looked down at his hands. His fingers were still sparking on their own, as if against the keys of an invisible piano. He clenched his fists, hard, and the trembling stopped. “Yes,” he said.

The mug twitched in his hand, but Mitya had only filled it halfway, giving him enough leeway to manage. Mitya glanced at Fedya, awaiting either more instructions or more payment, but Fedya had eyes only for Anatole. After a moment, the boy shrugged and left, touching the seven kopeks already warming his pocket.

Anatole couldn’t hold the mug steady. Fedya felt his own arm reach out, compulsively, to support Anatole’s, but he pulled it back. The last thing Anatole needed was a soldier trying to control him. Even a soldier who loved him. Fedya sat by, helpless, and watched.

Not five minutes after that, the door opened again, and Hélène returned.

She had changed into something more practical, a simple blouse and gray skirt beneath her fur coat—though, Fedya noted, she hadn’t removed the pearls. The best-dressed nurse this side of Paris. She carried a bag over one arm, in which Fedya supposed she’d brought warmer clothes of Anatole’s. The bag dropped to the floor the moment she entered, as if her hand had forgotten how to hold things.

Gingerly, Anatole set the near-empty mug on the table near the bed, and met Hélène’s stunned stare. They looked like twin ghosts, staring at one another from opposite mirrors.

Hélène turned to Fedya. “You _ass_ ,” she snapped. “You said he wouldn’t wake for hours.”

“Surprise,” Anatole said quietly.

Hélène laughed and ran to Anatole’s side, flinging her arms around him. Fedya half-stood from the chair, to stop her, but Anatole held his sister tight, so tight his arms shook. She kissed his forehead, and he flinched but didn’t pull back. Instead, he buried his head in her shoulder, as if Hélène’s arms were the only safe place in the world. Fedya sat back, watching them.

Of course Anatole would feel more comfortable with women. Women hadn’t hurt him over the past few months the way men had. And no woman meant more to him than his sister. Anatole loved Hélène more than any husband ever loved his wife, or any man his lover. Fedya should have expected this. But he couldn’t deny how much it hurt, watching Hélène give Anatole the embrace Fedya longed to, watching Anatole rest his head on a shoulder that should have been Fedya’s, and to hear the echo of his voice, _Can you move back? A little. Until Lena comes._

“I should have been here,” Hélène said. “I should have been here when you woke.”

But I was, Fedya wanted to shout. I was, I still am, can’t you see?

Anatole said nothing, only nuzzled against her shoulder. A childlike faith in his sister, that nothing could harm him while she was around. Anatole was twenty-four, and in that moment might have been nine.

“Are you warm enough?” Hélène said, forcing herself back into practicalities.

Anatole laughed grimly into her shoulder. “My bones are ice, Lena.”

She gestured for Fedya to bring the bag over to the bed. Refusing, without saying so, to leave Anatole long enough to get it herself. Fedya set it at her feet, then edged back to the chair. Hélène didn’t miss a trick. She watched the space Fedya carefully maintained between himself and Anatole. She noted the way Anatole’s shoulders tensed as Fedya approached. She saw the empty holster where his pistol belonged. She understood, in a moment. But when she spoke, none of that appeared in her voice. The world’s best liar, Hélène Bezukhova. No doubt in Fedya’s mind.

“I’ve brought some of your things from the house,” she said. “Warm things that fit you. Do you want us to leave while you change?”

Anatole looked down again at his hands. Months spent in darkness had eroded the social mask all the Kuragins had worn, the one that concealed their emotions behind a porcelain sweep of indifference. Anatole’s had always been weaker than the rest. It was gone now, and Fedya could read every thought. Anatole wanted to be alone—the thought of undressing in front of anyone else sent his fear spiraling toward panic. But he couldn’t stand. His hands couldn’t stop shaking. Buttons, sleeves, the whole mess of it, there was no way, he couldn’t manage it on his own.

“I’ll go,” Fedya said, standing. “Lena can help you.”

“Is that all right?” Hélène asked.

It wasn’t, not entirely, but it was as close as they would get. Anatole nodded, his lips pressed tight together. Fedya wanted to say something, anything. There was nothing to say. He swallowed, then left the room, shutting himself out in the hallway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tip your servers and your fic writers: kudos, comments, 20% of your total bill.


	4. Chapter 4

Most nights since Borodino, Hélène had dreamed of seeing her brother again. Some dreams were harsh. Seeing his body face-up in a mass grave, his limbs splayed heron-like and awkward, snow falling on his open eyes. She woke with a gasp after these, sitting up while Pierre snored on beside her. Other dreams were sweet. Hearing the sound of a violin sonata drifting up from the floor below, and descending to see him sitting in the drawing room, practicing with that faint smile, as if he’d always been there, as if she’d simply forgotten.

And now here he was, and she was seeing him again.

It wasn’t at all like she’d imagined it.

Anatole could sit up on his own, but not much more than that. She had to pull the blankets back and help him swing his legs to the side, resting them off the edge of the bed. It didn’t come naturally to her, taking care of people. Since Anatole left for the war, she hadn’t taken care of anyone, in any sense. Not even her father, who though pressing seventy still began every morning with twenty minutes of calisthenics. She was more comfortable with vodka than with nursing. But there was nothing she wouldn’t do for Anatole. Even this.

“I’m going to burn these clothes,” she said, undoing the buttons on his shirt.

Though he tensed beneath her touch, the sound of her voice seemed to calm him. He had always been that way. Easy to comfort, wanting only to please others and take pleasure in them. When they’d shared a room, back when he was small, she used to talk him through nightmares like this. She’d rubbed circles on his back and told him cruel stories about the neighborhood children, making him laugh until the terror passed. And the other nights they’d shared a bed, she could turn his blackest moods sideways with a word, a touch, a look. It was only Anatole. She knew how he worked. She could do this.

“The ladies in Moscow wouldn’t believe their eyes,” she said. “Anatole Kuragin, the peacock of Petersburg, wearing wool and cotton like a farmer’s—”

She broke off as she pulled the now-open shirt off his shoulders. Beneath the blankets and a layer of clothing, it had been easier to ignore how thin Anatole was. Now there was nothing to hide it. His ribs looked like the iron bars of railroad tracks. The bruises shone lurid as galaxies against his pale skin. One wrapped around his left bicep, the width and shape of a man’s hand.

“You don’t have to look at me like that,” Anatole said quietly.

Hélène flinched. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right.”

“I know. That’s why I said it.”

He was in there still, the old Anatole. Still an ass. That tiny bite of sarcasm gave her more hope than anything the doctor had said.

“You know so much, you do it yourself,” she said. “Hold out your arms.”

Mutely, he did as he was told. Hélène had pulled the warmest shirt she could find from Anatole’s closet. A thick flannel, off-white and blue, the fabric dense but soft enough to give. It wasn’t fashionable, so he’d worn it rarely, only in the dead of winter or when traveling.

The contents of his closet had remained untouched, all these months. So had everything in the guest room he’d occupied before the war. After the messenger came with news of his death, she’d drifted to his room alone, sank down on the end of the bed with one of his shirts in her hand. She sat there an hour or more and pressed the fabric to her cheek as if to memorize the scent of him. As if she could have forgotten. Thinking one sentence, dull like a leaden bell, _Dead, My brother is dead, My brother is dead._ At last, Pierre came to stand in the doorway. Unsettled by the weight of his eyes on her grief, she closed and locked the door. Since then, Anatole’s room remained as he’d left it, a museum piece, gathering dust.

Until now.

Anatole winced as she buttoned the shirt to the collar. She’d gone too long without saying something.

“Do you remember the last time I had to do this?” Hélène asked.

“I would never have let you do this,” Anatole said tersely.

“You did,” Hélène said. “You were thirteen, do you remember? You spent all night in the hayloft with the butler’s daughter and came down with pneumonia?”

“Double pneumonia.”

“All right, Monsieur Dramatic, _double_ pneumonia,” she said, bending down to ease the ill-fitting socks off his feet. His breath hissed, and no wonder. His feet were so cold they hurt her hands. “You had that fever for five days. And Papa was no help. Can you lift your hips? Those trousers are a disgrace. I should kill the tailor who made them.”

Anatole gritted his teeth, then stood—really, propped himself on his hands and leaned until Hélène could slide his trousers down to his thighs. He collapsed back again, breathing hard. His underclothes ought to have gone too, straight on the fire, but Hélène didn’t dare try that. Not when she could already hear his breath going ragged, too shallow and too fast. She tossed the old trousers aside and produced clean ones from her bag. Loose, simple, practical wool. So unlike Anatole’s aesthetic she suspected they weren’t his at all, but something he’d taken from the floor of a former lover and appropriated for his own closet. Which, to be frank, was absolutely his aesthetic.

“You were sweating like the devil, thanks to that fever,” Hélène said. “I had to change your clothes and sheets every night. All by myself. And you never thanked me.”

“You could have asked Lito for help.” Anatole’s voice was tight as Hélène guided his legs into the trousers, but the rambling conversation she’d begun was working. If he could keep grounded enough to respond, they would make it through this.

“If I wanted you to wear your shirt backward, I could,” she said. “I don’t trust Ippolyt to dress himself, let alone you. Lift up again, there you go. Can you get that button?”

He did, though it took several seconds to do it. When he had, Hélène handed him two pairs of woolen socks, with a stern expression like an Austrian governess.

“Wear both of these,” she said.

“You knit them yourself?” he said, taking them. The dig almost sounded natural, but she knew him too well for that. He was only trying for her sake. He didn’t want her to worry.

The effort was a good sign, but she would worry anyway, no matter what he did.

“The hell I did,” she said. “It takes more than a war to turn me domestic.”

She waited as Anatole pulled them on, and pretended not to notice how he bit his lip as his hands refused to cooperate.

When he straightened up again, Hélène extended a sweater, knit from thick, dark blue wool. One of Pierre’s: an old man’s cardigan. Not that Pierre would miss it. Lost in his books and his unsubtle courtship of Natasha—which the fool thought she hadn’t noticed—the mundane details of daily life eluded Hélène’s husband. She could have taken half their furniture and sold it to the family of Romani traders near the river, and Pierre wouldn’t blink. But the notion of Anatole and Pierre sharing clothes should have been ridiculous. The Anatole she knew would have looked at the shapeless sweater, then held it up against his own clothing, his close-tailored shirts and audacious waistcoats, and burst out laughing. Where do you think we are, Lena, he’d say, an asylum for the elderly? Christ on high, I’d rather freeze. Find me something with a _shape_.

Anatole shrugged into Pierre’s sweater without a word. Suited to Pierre’s corpulent frame, it made her brother look like a wraith.

“Toto,” Hélène said. “Fedya and I want to help you.”

Hélène could feel him drifting, every second he was drifting, she saw his shoulders tense and knew his mind had taken him somewhere else, and she didn’t know how to bring him back, he looked so lost and she needed to help him and she didn’t know _how_.

“I just…” he began.

“You don’t have to explain,” she said. “I know it’s hard. Fedya knows. But we’ll never hurt you. Either of us. Ever.”

Anatole nodded. With effort, he pulled his legs back into bed, making himself as small as he could. He brought one hand to his head and let it rest there, half-nested in his hair. “Can I have a few minutes?” he said, looking at his knees.

His voice had never sounded so small, even as a child. Her touch, cautious and gentle as it was, had terrified him. She’d hurt Anatole. She hadn’t meant to, had done everything she could not to, but the fear in his eyes was there because of her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d wanted to cry so badly. But she wouldn’t let herself. Not now, in front of Anatole, who needed her to be strong for him. Who depended on her for safety, for protection, for everything.

“Of course,” she said. “If you want us, knock on the wall. Twice for me, three times for both of us.”

He nodded. “Just a few minutes.”

“As long as you need.”

She stepped out to join Fedya in the hall.

Fedya looked as bad as she felt. He sat on the floor with his back against the wall, knees pulled into his chest. He had been staring at his boots, but looked up as she emerged. He had almost certainly been crying. His eyes were rimmed with red, and his voice sounded thick in his throat. But she wouldn’t bring that up. Fedya was a soldier. A captain now, apparently, going by the uniform. He had his dignity to think of. And if she didn’t point out that he’d been weeping, he’d have no grounds to mention the tears in her eyes.

“How did it go?” he asked.

“We finished,” Hélène said grimly. She sank down beside him, skirt be damned. “He’ll be warm now, at least. He just…he needed a minute.”

“But he’ll be fine,” Fedya said.

Hélène reached over to take his hand. One of them was shaking, though whether it was his or hers, she didn’t know.

“Yes,” she said. “I think so.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess how many minutes I spent researching "history of cardigans" for this chapter.  
> Answer: Too many minutes.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for a flashback in the first section of this chapter. If sexual violence is a trigger for you, feel free to skip to the break. (It's not detailed, but it's as much as I'm giving of what happened.)

Why was it like this? Why was this still happening?

Anatole slumped forward, both hands to his head. His heart would not stop trembling, so hard and so fast it almost made him dizzy. He couldn’t breathe, not properly. Every breath hitched, half as if he was drowning, breathing through water, and half something worse, like a man’s hand had gripped his throat.

He couldn’t stop feeling it. Every time Fedya looked at him. When Hélène’s hands pulled away his clothes, leaving him vulnerable again, and cold. Even here, even alone.

_you’re safe. you’re in Moscow, with Fedya and Hélène. they’d rather die than hurt you._

the cold laugh of a man in uniform, and

_you're in a bed. sunlight. warm. free._

and he was still cold, always, he would never be warm again, and

_you’re alone now, damn it, you’re safe_

and a hand around his throat, and there wasn’t enough air, there wasn't

Anatole bent his head between his knees. It didn’t help. The dizziness was still there. It made the inside of his eyelids shimmer, an almost-scarlet instead of black, shot through with flecks of gold.

there wasn’t enough air in this room

_just breathe, you’re safe, breathe_

there wasn’t enough _air—_

He could hear them again, the voices. He’d never really stopped hearing them.

They’d come as a pair, the first time. Two French soldiers left to guard the prisoners, an officer and a private. They bent down, crouching before him in the dark. He tried to edge away, but there was nowhere to go. His wrists were chained above his head. The wall pressed hard against his spine. The officer stroked a hand along his cheek, then smiled and pressed two fingers against Anatole’s lips.

Anatole closed his eyes and tried to think of Fedya. Fedya had touched him this way, before all this. Tenderly. Fedya had always been tender, so out of step with his demeanor in battle. Hell with a gun, heaven in a bed. Every touch like making love to a dream. Anatole had led the way, then. Welcomed it, then. Took the tips of Fedya’s fingers in his mouth, slowly, and sucked down like a promise. Smiled as Fedya shuddered with the tease. Anatole could never resist that shudder. Had never managed to tease Fedya long.

Open your eyes, the officer said, and look at me.

These men were not Fedya.

This one, the officer said to the private, and laughed. Didn’t I say?

He’s not bad, the private said.

Not bad?

For a Russian dog.

You won’t find a better-looking boy in any street in Paris. I’ve tried.

The officer tucked his hand beneath Anatole’s chin, forcing his head up. Anatole met his eyes boldly. There had been fight in him still, then. Enough fight for that.

Waiting for us like a bird in a cage, the officer said.

Anatole spat in the officer’s face.

The officer shook his head. His left hand wiped the spit from his brow. His right closed around Anatole’s throat.

Oh, pretty one, he said. That was a mistake.

Anatole made no sound when they freed his hands and pulled him out of the cell. Too stunned to. The moment the man’s hand gripped his throat, he stopped thinking anything. His mind, knowing what would happen, shut down. He hovered a foot over his own body, watching.

They dragged him down the hall, to an office lit by an oil lamp on the corner of the desk. The private locked the door. The officer threw Anatole down on the desk, pinning both arms behind his back.

We were going to go easy, little bird, the officer said, his voice hot against the back of Anatole’s neck. But now, I think we’ll take our time.

Anatole screwed his eyes shut and left his body there on the desk. He heard his own soft cries of pain from miles away. Someone ought to put a stop to it, this thing, this thing happening to a man who wasn’t him.

He slid to the floor when the officer released him. Curled up on himself like a child. The officer bent down, breathing heavy, and kissed Anatole’s neck at the crook of his shoulder.

Go on, the officer said to the private, and clapped the younger man on the shoulder. He’s all yours. It’s easy, now.

The private was less experienced than the officer. Clumsier. Rougher. Anatole screamed only once, while it happened.

After, the private wiped his brow and fastened his fly, laughing with the officer. Anatole lay still on the floor, trembling. Forgotten. A used-up thing at their feet, raw and vacant.

They tried to pull him back to his feet, but Anatole’s legs were not listening. Every step felt like a bayonet through him. The officer laughed and lifted him like a child, cradled in his arms. The smell, tobacco and sweat and sex and something more pervasive, a bitter, sour smell that might have been cologne or piss. He tried to get free of the man’s arms—he could run, his mind still wasn’t working properly but it had that one thought, he could run, he could run. But then the officer let him fall, and the cell floor struck the back of his head. His vision shivered with gold. He felt their hands move him, iron back around his wrists. When he could see again, he was trapped, the same as before. Only not the same.

The officer smiled to the private, then bent to place a kiss on Anatole’s forehead.

You’re a treasure, he said, and patted him on the cheek, twice, hard as a slap. Be good, until next time.

There had been next times.

Sometimes the officer alone, sometimes with others. An impressionable private, or a friend from the line. Once, three colonels, drunk after a French loss on the battlefield, swearing death to the Tsar and spoiling for something to ruin.

That kiss on his forehead, and the quiet promise.

There in Fedya’s bed, Anatole buried his head in his knees and screamed. Screamed until it hurt, which didn’t take long. Curled up on himself, his fingers digging into his hair until that hurt too.

_you’re safe here_

_you’re safe_

_you are_

until next time, little bird

 

* * *

 

The scream was a relief, in its way. It excised something from between his ribs, until there was space enough for him to breathe. It took another five minutes until his heart slowed, another minute after that until the haze at the edges of his vision cleared and something resembling calm descended. His chest ached like he’d been kicked by a horse. He sat up straight and rubbed his palm against his breastbone in slow circles, easing it out.

Anatole took a deep breath. The exhale shuddered like a ship tossed on the sea, but he could empty his lungs without the panicked, convulsive gasps that had come with the memory.

It was passing. The worst of it.

The silence from the hall felt pointed and sharp, like a whisper in his ear.

He ran one hand over his forehead, damp with sweat. Then, biting his tongue, he reached over to the wall beside the bed and knocked twice.

After a pause, he knocked a third time.

Hélène entered first, followed by a clearly apprehensive Fedya. Anatole’s heart quickened almost instantly. He sat in the corner of the bed, where two walls pressed against his shoulders. There in the corner, he could see the door. There in the corner, he couldn’t be surprised. Couldn’t be hurt. He could do this.

Both Fedya and Hélène had heard him scream, he was sure. The three of them knew one another so well that no one even mentioned it.

“What helps, Toto?” Hélène asked. She and Fedya still stood near the door, holding one another’s hand. “Closer, or farther away?”

What would help? He didn’t know what would help. Nothing helped. Nothing made sense.

“A little closer?” he said. Unused, after so long, to voicing his own preferences, the answer came out a question. “And the door—”

“Open or closed?” Fedya asked.

“Closed,” Anatole said firmly.

People could come through open doors. Other people. People he didn’t know. Hélène and Fedya frightened him, but he knew them. Anyone else would only be worse.

Fedya closed the door, so carefully the wood barely made a sound, and sat on the floor about six feet from Anatole. He’d judged the distance perfectly. Any closer and Anatole would panic, any farther and he’d be exposed. Without being asked, Fedya had removed the jacket of his uniform and left it in the hall. Like this, in shirtsleeves and suspenders, unarmed and without the epaulettes, he looked like a civilian. Like the man Anatole had loved. Still loved. It was easier like this. As if he’d known that. Hélène sat near him, her knees resting on Fedya’s thighs.

“The doctor will be by later,” Fedya said. “You can try eating again then.”

“What doctor?” Surprises. Surprises and strangers.

“Doctor Levin,” Hélène said. “You remember him? He treated Lito’s consumption.”

“You seduced his daughter’s governess,” Fedya said drily.

Anatole laughed. It startled him, that he still could. That things still struck him as funny. He didn’t question it—would take whatever he could get. “Brigitte Lamballe,” he said. “The one with the tits.”

Fedya grinned. That brilliant, audacious grin Anatole knew from before the war. One willing to go along for any scheme, any gamble. A grin that put a whole generation of Moscow ladies on edge, but one that comforted Anatole, from six feet away. Fedya knew him as a person, a person who had lived and laughed and loved, not an object to be used. Anatole could see it, in that smile, and clung to it.

“Yes, the one with the tits,” Fedya said, though unlike Anatole, he had never given a damn about tits. “She wrote you poetry.”

“You wrote her poetry back,” Anatole said.

“I swore that was the last time I’d write your love letters,” Fedya said, and wrinkled his nose.

“And we know how that turned out.”

Hélène laughed. “I don’t know why you picked him to help you, Toto _._ Fedya once wrote me a poem where he rhymed _Hélène_ with _inane._ ”

“They _do_ rhyme,” Fedya said.

“Almost. And it’s not exactly flattering.”

It all felt—not natural, natural was the wrong word. But manageable. He could bear this. Later, when Anatole felt stronger, when the world was not so wild and unfamiliar, he could deal with the memories, the terror, the words whispering through open doors or dark corners. Pushing the fear away wasn’t cowardice. It was how he survived. Doing just this, or trying to. If it hurt to think of, and it didn’t need to be thought of now, he would save it to think of later. Here, with two walls against his back and the two people he loved most sitting near him, he would avoid and deny and pretend with all his strength, for as long as it worked.

“What do you need right now?” Hélène asked. She leaned her head against Fedya’s shoulder, and Fedya twined his arm around her waist in return. Anatole felt the warmth of both gestures. It wasn’t madness, to think that they were holding each other, meaning the embrace for him.

“This,” he said. “Just this.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter six, in which my boy Fedya Dolokhov is back on his bullshit: yelling at himself for failing to meet impossible expectations he set for his own damn self. (Projecting? Me? Pfft.)

Fedya hadn’t fully realized how tense his uniform made Anatole until he sat near him without it. Though Anatole had retreated to the corner of the bed, though he still wouldn’t meet Fedya’s eyes, he could carry on a conversation this way. Talking seemed to help, and so they talked, Anatole and Fedya and Hélène. Not about anything important, just chatter, easy memories, from well before the war. It sent Fedya’s heart wincing in a way he couldn’t explain. Only that he’d thought these conversations were gone forever, and here they were, having another one. For the first ten minutes, he almost couldn’t speak.

Hélène seemed to feel nothing of the sort. Or, if she did, she was better at hiding it. She spoke with the kind of affection she reserved solely for Anatole, a kind that would have stunned—and, perhaps, revolted—her husband, had Pierre been there to hear.

Fedya tried his best, but he couldn’t feign composure the way Hélène could. He kept largely silent, gripping his own knees in his hands, and let his own rage fester.

It was never supposed to be like this. Anatole should never have gone to war at all. His father was the most Machiavellian man in Russia. Vasily could get any man in or out of any post he wanted. Just look at what he’d done for stupid little Boris Drubetskoy, at the start of the war. The boy could barely hold a gun the right way round, and look at him, captain of the Imperial Guard, all because Vasily Kuragin whispered the right words into the right man’s ear. Anatole was a good shot, and he was daring, and his nerve was strong, but he wasn’t a fighter. Vasily should have known that. Ought to have found Anatole an administrative job, back in Petersburg. Could have done something. Boris was nobody. Anatole was his _son_.

This wasn’t the point, of course. It was easy to blame Vasily, cold and cruel and manipulative, there in his Petersburg mansion. But Fedya knew who had really betrayed Anatole, when it mattered most.

Fedya knew he had no one to blame but himself.

Anatole had come to him, the night before the battle. They’d managed to meet some nights like that, right under the noses of their superior officers, without anyone suspecting a thing. Fedya, as a decorated captain, had a tent to himself, and Anatole, as a shameless playboy, had the knack for sneaking unseen into other people’s beds. That night, there had been something desperate in the way Anatole held him. Something frightened in the way they fucked. After, they lay beside one another, backs cold against the tarp floor—Fedya’s camp bed wasn’t built to sustain activity like that. Fedya rested his head on Anatole’s chest. Anatole’s heart beat like a rabbit’s. They sat up, and Fedya smiled and cupped Anatole’s cheek in one hand.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said.

“Who said I was afraid?” Anatole’s voice broke, revealing the lie.

“You’re with me,” Fedya said. “The luckiest son of a bitch in Russia. Every shot they aim at me, it misses.”

“Pierre didn’t miss,” Anatole reminded him.

“Pierre,” Fedya said, and kissed Anatole in a businesslike manner, “doesn’t count.”

They both flinched at the sound of footsteps drilling outside the tent. Anatole sighed, then began to dress. He’d be expected back with his company in a few minutes, for orders before tomorrow’s action. Fedya could see the patch of red rising along Anatole’s neck, a signature from Fedya’s lips. As if unconsciously, Anatole shifted his shoulder, and the collar of his coat hid the mark. It was masterful.

Anatole paused at the entrance of the tent, then looked back at Fedya.

“Lend me some of your luck, eh?” he said quietly. “Just a little.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you, idiot,” Fedya said. “Don’t you know that? I’ll keep you safe.”

Anatole had smiled at that, and gave Fedya one last kiss before ducking out of the tent and into the night. Somehow, he avoided notice, though heaven knew how—the camp was swarming with soldiers. Anatole would have been an incredible burglar, if he’d transferred his energies from seduction to crime.

For months, Fedya thought that was the last time he’d ever see Anatole. Paused there at the edge of the tent, his lean silhouette a slash against the dark. His handsome face half-turned to the night, brushed with stars.

I’ll keep you safe, Fedya had said. The last lie he’d spoken to a dead man.

But no, worse than that.

_I’ll keep you safe_ , and the next day French soldiers had dragged Anatole bleeding and semi-conscious from the field. Recognizing him for what he was: a junior officer but an aristocrat, one with a rich Petersburg family who’d buy him back for a profit. _I’ll keep you safe,_ and the French threw Anatole in an underground cell, chained and starved and beaten. They must have sent out for ransom—he wouldn’t have been worth the expense of keeping alive otherwise—but Anatole had disgraced the Kuragin name with his exploits in Moscow, and Vasily, who’d never liked him anyway, wouldn’t have paid. _I’ll keep you safe_ , and for six months they’d abused him until the sight of a man in uniform sent him into a silent breathless panic, until the softest touch on his shoulder felt like a precursor to violence, and Fedya should go out in the alley behind this building and put a pistol in his mouth right this minute, for letting this—

“Fedya,” Hélène said sharply.

Fedya flinched and looked at her. Her eyes flashed as she stared at him, her lips tight.

“I need you to be strong,” she said. “I can’t do this for both of you.”

He bit his lip and nodded. “I will,” he said.

And he would. He was strong on the battlefield. Fierce. Untouchable. And this was another war, in its way.

But if he was going to be strong, he’d need a drink to do it.

By the time Levin turned up, around two that afternoon, Fedya had made a sizeable dent in a bottle of vodka—though, by Fedya’s standards, he was pacing himself. He’d stocked the cupboard before leaving for war, suspecting he’d need it when he returned. He was right, as it happened, though he’d never imagined it would be for this reason. He wasn’t drunk. Not by a mile. But the vodka coated his nerves in something protective, something that could bear surprises.

Levin brushed snow from the shoulders of his thick bearskin coat as he entered, then froze halfway through the door. Anatole sat up in bed, watching him with wide, cold eyes. Levin gave him a faintly surprised smile. Anatole’s earlier ease had vanished. He was on edge again, tense, fight or flight.

Fedya cleared his throat. “Anatole, this is Doctor Levin. He’s been helping us look after you. You can trust him.”

Right. Anatole could trust him. He could trust Fedya’s word. Fedya, who’d proven himself the biggest liar in this room, for those stupid words he’d promised but couldn’t keep, _I’ll keep you safe_ —

No. None of that right now.

“It’s good to see you up,” Levin said to Anatole. He took a step nearer to the bed. Anatole inched back into the corner. Levin paused, following the movement, and gestured at the empty chair. “May I?”

Anatole paused, obviously expecting Levin to do it anyway. But Levin, it seemed, wouldn’t make the move without Anatole’s permission. At last, Anatole gave a curt, unencouraging nod.

Levin sat, shrugging off his fur. “I’ve just come to look in on you. I’m glad you’re awake, that makes this easier. How do you feel?”

“Like shit,” Anatole said tightly.

“No doubt,” Levin said, with a faint smile. “But I need you to be specific. Pain?”

Anatole bit his lower lip and said nothing. He didn’t trust the doctor. Hated him, even, if the way his jaw had set was any indication. But they had no choice but to push through. Fedya knew as much medicine as any soldier in the field. He could bandage a leg, tie a tourniquet, splint a broken arm. What Anatole needed was out of his range. Fedya couldn’t heal this.

“It’s all right, Toto,” Hélène said. “You can tell him.”

“Headache,” Anatole said finally. He’d spoken normally to Fedya and Hélène, but for Levin, fragments seemed like the most he could manage. “My stomach.”

“Is that nausea, or is it pain?”

“Knives,” Anatole said tightly, and pressed his palm against the right side of his ribcage.

“What else?”

Anatole clenched his fists, driving them against his thighs. “Can’t stop shaking,” he said. “Can’t stand. Hurts to breathe. It’s cold. I want to scratch my skin off.”

Fedya flinched as Hélène gripped his knee tight. But that shouldn’t have been a surprise. She’d known her brother longer than Fedya had. And Anatole had always been that way, flayed by anxiety. The worst Fedya had seen it get was during the height of last year’s madness, when Anatole had been entangled with Natalya Rostova. Fedya had watched Anatole pace endless, anxious lengths up and down the length of his study. When Fedya encouraged him to sit, Anatole picked at the skin around his nails instead, unconsciously but constantly. At last, Fedya took Anatole’s hand and pulled it away, his stomach turning at the sight of blood pooling between the knuckles. He forced Anatole to wear gloves in the house for three days, after that.

“I understand,” Levin said. “Anything else?”

Anatole closed his eyes. “No,” he said.

“No confusion? You know where you are?”

One question too many.

Anatole’s pale eyes flashed as he stared down the doctor. Despite Anatole’s gaunt figure and the four feet between them, Levin drew back in the chair. Fedya couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t seen Anatole this angry in years. Anatole didn’t _do_ anger. Petulance, sullenness, irritation, impatience, but not anger. Not like this.

“Russia,” Anatole snarled. “Moscow. It’s 1812, I’m twenty-three, Tsar Alexander is in the Kremlin. That’s my best friend, that’s my sister, this is my right hand, this is my left, I’m not an idiot, God damn it, I’m not crazy, I’m not a fucking _child._ ”

A pause.

Fedya looked at Hélène. He was being strong. He was being as strong as he could. But he needed Hélène to take this one.

She nodded, then turned to her brother.

“Toto, love,” Hélène said quietly. “It’s 1813. You’re twenty-four now. And Napoleon bombed the Kremlin, while you were…while you were away.”

The anger drained from Anatole at once. He looked like a child, now. Exposed and confused, and more than a little frightened.

“Oh,” he said, without any tone at all.

The silence following this seemed to last a hundred years.

At last, Levin cleared his throat, then clapped his hands together in what might have been a cheerful down-to-business gesture. “If you’re amenable,” he said, “I’d like to perform a quick examination. To find the best way to address the pain. Perhaps we might have some privacy?” he asked, glancing at Fedya and Hélène still sitting on the floor.

Fedya cocked his head to the side and did not stand. The doctor was the professional in the room, but there were some decisions he didn’t get to make. And Fedya wouldn’t abandon Anatole again, not unless he was sent away.

“Tolya?” he said.

“Don’t go,” Anatole said instantly.

Hope swelled through Fedya’s heart, followed close by guilt. This isn’t about you, he told himself sharply. That wasn’t a victory for _you._

Levin didn’t fight them on the point. Which was as well. Fedya would have shot him if he had.

The examination was quick, almost perfunctory. Despite Anatole’s misgivings, Levin’s touch was careful, always deferential. He never made a move without clearly communicating exactly what he’d do and when, asking quiet permission for any contact that might be troubling. No surprises, nothing rough. Even Fedya felt at ease watching him. True, Anatole’s breath still caught when Levin helped him away from the wall and pressed one ear to his back, listening to his lungs as he inhaled. But it was nothing more than that. Just a slight catch, one that eased back into rhythm with the soft cadence of Levin’s voice, urging him to breathe deeply. The doctor had clearly walked this particular road before. And while Anatole was fighting down panic every minute, thanks to the doctor’s care, the panic was staying down.

After what might have been ten minutes, Levin nodded.

“Thank you,” he said to Anatole, and smiled. “That’s all from me. You can relax.” He moved away from the bed, to reinforce the notion.

Anatole leaned into the corner again. He looked wearier than before, despite sleeping for a day and a half.

The doctor dipped into his bag and retrieved a small glass vial of chalk-white tablets. He looked between Fedya and Hélène, trying to determine which one of them was in charge. Fedya stepped forward, extending a hand. He was a captain—taking charge was what he did. This was his house. He’d been the one to find Anatole. He’d been the one to fail him. Fedya had given this responsibility to himself, and no one would hold him to it, not even Anatole, but that didn’t matter at all.

“It’s as I suspected, Prince Anatole,” Levin said. He pressed the vial into Fedya’s hand, then turned back to Anatole. “You’re suffering from a minor bout of pneumonia. What I’ve just given Captain Dolokhov should help you breathe easier within a few days. Take one each morning, and another each evening.”

“And the pain?” Hélène asked, pressing one hand to her own ribs. “The shaking?”

“I wouldn’t worry,” Levin said. He smiled at Anatole, who ignored his efforts at congeniality. “I know it’s unpleasant, but the chest pain is pneumonia and the stomach pain is hunger. As he’s able to eat, the pain will fade. He shows no signs of nerve damage, so I’m certain the shaking is from malnutrition as well. Wholly reversible.”

The doctor reached for his coat and tugged it over his shoulders. “Any questions for me?” he said, looking back at Anatole.

Fedya winced. Anatole had lain back in bed again, and was now staring fixedly at the ceiling, as if Levin hadn’t spoken to him at all.

This didn’t seem to faze Levin in the slightest. “Captain? Madame?” he said, turning the inquiry on them.

Fedya looked at Hélène. Questions? Absolutely. Questions this man could answer? Less likely. When would Anatole stop fearing shadows? When would his eyes lose that hunted look? When would the Anatole they knew come back, or had that man died in the war after all?

“No,” Fedya said, and shook the doctor’s hand. “Thank you.”

Levin waved a hand, dismissing Fedya’s thanks. “You’ve done everything just right,” he said, and smiled.

God damn everything. Fedya was a man, a soldier, a trained killer. He was not going to cry because a short little man in a fur coat smiled and told him he’d followed orders and done what was asked of him, Mary and Jesus he was _not_. He blinked with a vengeance and cleared his throat.

“Time is what he needs now,” Levin said. “But he’s woken sooner than I expected. There’s hope in that. I’ll give him time, look in next week, but if you need me—”

“We’ll call,” Hélène said, and showed the doctor out. “Thank you.”

When they turned back to Anatole, he had turned his face to the wall and pulled the blankets up to his ears. It was impossible to tell whether or not he was really asleep.


	7. Chapter 7

Whether or not Anatole started out by feigning sleep, it became clear after an hour that he really had drifted off. Fedya and Hélène stayed awake. They sat together on the sofa across the room, speaking in lowered voices to avoid waking him. They didn’t have much to say, but the silence was agony. Fedya didn’t want to hear the soft rasp of Anatole’s breathing, sharp through the quiet. The sound should have been a comfort. It felt like a death sentence, hovering.

Soon after the dusky half-daylight through the window turned into genuine black, Fedya stretched out on the floor with a small sigh. The bed, of course, would stay Anatole’s. It wasn't late yet. During the long Moscow winters, night came early, and lingered. But a day of worry had exhausted Fedya. He spread an old fur coat out for a blanket and tucked one arm beneath his head for a pillow. Hélène curled up on the couch without complaining, and without asking whether she could stay. There was no question of her returning home that night.

Fedya knew he’d have to convince her to go back to Pierre again, in a few days. She’d resent him for it, he mused, drifting toward sleep, but it had to be done. The neighbors would start to talk, otherwise. There was something inappropriate about an unmarried soldier hosting a married woman. Although, Fedya reminded himself, there had always been something inappropriate about the three of them. The shameless countess, the libertine prince, and the fierce captain. Moscow had its suspicions, about Dolokhov and the Kuragins. Fedya wasn’t oblivious to the whispers, the stares, the rumors.

Of course, all the rumors were true.

He let the memory flow in, edging out the room around him. Remembering was easier than worrying. At least in memory, he knew how the story would end.

It started out the way most affairs did: with denial. Though Fedya wouldn’t admit it to himself, he’d never been interested in women. Not the way he wanted to be. He’d tried his best, in the usual ways. Nice girls, ones his mother had set him up with. Less-nice girls, from the brothels south of the river. All of it fine, not unpleasant, but nothing to inspire _desire._ More relief. Like finally scratching an itch.

He knew his feelings weren’t quite right. He’d listened to his fellow soldiers sing the drunken hymn of their lovers’ praises to a winter moon, and knew he’d never be that way. It was better for them than it was for him. But—denial in his soul, five fathoms deep—he wouldn’t let himself reason out why. Women don’t excite you, Fyodor, you like them but you don’t love them, and sex with women leaves you cold, which means that perhaps you would prefer—what? A logic problem that the Word of God and his mother’s kind smile had forbidden him from exploring.

Years of disappointment, denial, something-not-quite-right. Somewhere along the line, he’d turned to Hélène.

Hélène, who was game for anything. Hélène, who almost made him feel something. Hélène who let it go on six months without asking a single question, taking the ride for what they both knew it was. They were fast, harsh, reckless, having one another wherever they pleased. Once in a private box at the ballet, right in the middle of the performance, Fedya’s hand and the tremor of an oboe both muffling her moans. More than once in Pierre and Hélène’s bed. There was something pleasurable about it, knowing the sheets beneath his back belonged to another man. He didn’t let himself think that through either.

One night, another night in Pierre’s bed, she came twice by the time Fedya finished. Not that this was unusual. He often struggled to orgasm, but no one could claim that Fedya Dolokhov was not generous with his time and his tongue. He pulled out and sat up in bed beside her, exhausted by the effort it had taken to climax.

To his own surprise, he found himself weeping like a child.

He couldn’t explain why. Nothing had been different. But the sadness crushing him, a lead weight around his ribs, there was no denying it. Another woman might told him to pull himself together. Another woman might have attributed it to frustrated manhood or embarrassment. Not Hélène. She touched the back of his hand and asked just one question.

“It’s Anatole, isn’t it?”

The tears stopped at once.

Anatole.

Fedya couldn’t explain why he’d wept, but Hélène could.

Another problem Fedya hadn’t solved until that night. Hélène amuses you, Fyodor, you like her, you find her clever and bold and daring, but every time you hold her, you pretend that her eyes are blue and that she speaks French better than she does, and you pretend that she has a different way of walking, almost a swagger, so that the street seems to move beneath her instead of she on top of it. You wish and you lie and you spend all your time with this family, every moment you’re awake you’re with her family, because—

Because it wasn’t Hélène he wanted. It was Hélène’s brother.

She never missed a trick, Hélène.

“He’ll say yes,” she said. “If that’s what worries you.”

“Lena,” he said, and closed his eyes. “Don’t.”

“You think I’m lying?”

“Anatole likes women.”

“Anatole likes all sorts of things. Last night, he said if I really loved him, I’d share you.”

Fedya stared. “What?”

Hélène laughed. “He dwelled a bit, I’m afraid,” she said, and adopted the unmistakable cadence of Anatole’s voice. “‘Ask Dolokhov to dinner, eh? Let me go a round with your war hero. Jesus, Lena, his ass deserves a legion d’honneur.’”

“What?”

“He suggested we all go at it together, if I couldn’t bear to give you up.”

“ _What?_ ” Fedya shouted it, that time. Surely the neighbors had heard. Hélène smirked and said nothing, watching him blush.

“It’s a sin,” Fedya said at last—though surely a _ménage à trois_ between him, another man, and that man’s married sister was at least four sins.

“So is this,” she said, and gestured at the two of them, naked together in her husband’s bed. “And this.” She kissed the tattoo on Fedya’s right shoulder, the small six-pointed star in blue ink he’d gotten in honor of his mother. “And this.” She turned over in bed to pour herself three fingers of whiskey from the decanter on the bedside table.

Fedya took the glass from her before she could drink and drained half in a swallow. “Not that,” he said. “Christ was a drunk, that’s scripture. Bet you fifty rubles he drank Peter under the table at the Last Supper.”

She smirked and snatched the glass back. “Now that,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek, “was a sin.”

Somehow, from there, they ended up fucking once again. It was like moving through a dream. He came fast and luminous, a laugh in his throat, hearing the echo of Anatole’s voice, _let me go a round._ Hélène hadn’t finished, but just once he felt entitled to a flash of selfishness. She ran both hands through her hair, then turned away from him and pulled the sheet over her bare back.

“Toto will suit you, I think,” she said, and yawned. “He’s very good.”

Fedya sat up, awake, for another hour, thinking about that.

He never mentioned it to either of them, what he knew. It was none of his business what the Kuragin siblings did among themselves. A few nights together—more than a few?—didn’t seem to have done any harm, and neither brother nor sister made much effort to hide it. In any case, Fedya, who had killed a dozen men at least, was in no position to judge. And the arrangement Hélène had proposed, the three of them, that was…

Well, it wasn’t unattractive.

Even with Hélène’s assurances, it took him six months to work up the courage to meet Anatole’s eye and ask him. Anatole had no such hesitation. Within fifteen seconds of the question, Fedya’s back was pressed hard against the door of Anatole’s room, and Fedya had whimpered like a kitten as Anatole’s kiss confirmed everything he had ever suspected, that this was what he wanted, this was who he needed, _this._

Happiness. Reaching it had seemed so complicated, then. Thinking back on it now, compared to the previous two days, it had been impossibly simple.

A sharp cry from the bed startled Fedya back into the moment.

He stood up, tossing the fur coat to the floor. From the shimmer of moonlight falling through the crack in the curtains, he could make out Anatole, tangled hopelessly in the sheets. His hand grasped at the corner of the mattress with fingers crooked like claws, and even from here Fedya could see his body was slick with sweat. He twitched slightly, caught in a dream, and a second cry escaped him, this one a word, _no._

Fedya started to move forward, to shake Anatole awake by the shoulder. The way he’d always done when they lay together and the nightmares came. Anatole would flinch awake, and Fedya would keep his hand on Anatole’s shoulder, grounding him, until Anatole could separate dream from life. He’d done it, what, ten times, a dozen? But Hélène put out one firm hand and stopped him.

“Don’t,” she said. “Let me.”

Anger swelled in Fedya’s chest. “I can—”

“Can you?” she snapped. “Is this for him, Dolokhov? Or for you?”

He stepped back, mutely, as if struck.

She was right, of course. This was how Fedya needed to take care of Anatole. This wasn’t how Anatole needed to be taken care of. Shaken awake by a soldier? The barrier between dream and reality was still too thin for that. Fedya had been Anatole’s lover for two years. Two years was everything to Fedya. Two years was not twenty-four.

Fedya knew Anatole like he knew his own heart, as well as he knew any person on earth. But Hélène would always know him better.

“Anatole,” she said, and knelt on the floor by the edge of the bed. She spoke loudly, clearly, as if to project her voice across a ballroom. She didn’t touch him. Rather, she folded her hands behind her back, knuckles at her tailbone. It was like watching a fortune-teller cast a spell. She had done this before, God knew how many times. “Anatole, come here. Listen to me. Wake up, love. Can you do that? I need you to wake up, Toto. Hush now, and wake up.”

With a shout, Anatole jerked upright. Wild-eyed.

Fedya’s soldier reflexes saw the next move happen before it even happened.

“No—” he began.

Too late. Still tangled in the web of the dream, Anatole pulled back and aimed a punch straight at Hélène.

But Hélène was quicker than that.

Her right hand whipped out from behind her back and caught Anatole by the wrist. She stopped the blow three inches from her face. Her grip wasn’t strong. But Hélène’s hand against his wrist froze Anatole. He stared, horrified. Seeing clearly, now, in Hélène’s frightened eyes, what he had almost done.

“It’s just me,” Hélène said. She leaned forward, barely, and pressed a small kiss to Anatole’s fist. “Just me.”

Anatole melted. All the fight ebbed from him, and when Hélène rose to sit in bed with him, he let her. He sighed and pressed his forehead to hers. She stroked a hand through his hair, damp now with sweat but still matted, dirty, dull. Even like this, one thin and haunted, the other shaken and afraid, the Kuragins were beautiful. Impossibly so. Fedya had never seen two people like them, and knew he never would again. Nose to nose in the moonlight, they looked more like a painting than like people. Fae creatures, delicate and seductive. Unreal.

“Dream?” she said.

Anatole nodded. His exhale shuddered on the way out. “Dream,” he confirmed, quietly.

Fedya hovered near the window, alone. Their words had the feel of a familiar call and response. No matter how long Fedya spent with Anatole, no matter how hard he tried, he’d never be able to do what Hélène had just done. She circled her thumb still through her brother’s hair, in tiny whorls near the nape of his neck. A little gesture. A familiar one.

“I would never—” Anatole began.

“I know. I know.”

“I didn’t—”

“I know. Hush.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t you ever be sorry,” Hélène said. “Not you.”

When Anatole kissed her, Fedya couldn’t turn away. He watched, just for a moment, as Anatole’s lips met Hélène’s, and he kissed her like a prayer, like doing devotion to the picture of a saint. Just for another moment, as she kissed him back like a promise, like a raft in the sea. Her lips parted, and when her fingers curled into his hair, the breath rushed out from him in a soft sigh, a tumbling wave.

They were beautiful, the two of them. Strange and beautiful and otherworldly, and, somehow, both broken and whole at once.

Then Fedya turned away and lit a small oil lamp in the corner. Despite the expense, he left it burning all night, to stave off the darkness.

In the morning, he wouldn’t mention any of it to either of them.

It had nothing to do with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Sidebar: someone give Josh Groban a MacArthur Genius Grant for the way he says "what" in A Call to Pierre.)
> 
> A million thanks to everyone who's left comments and kudos! You are wildly and shamelessly appreciated.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a longer chapter, because I couldn't find a better place to break this?
> 
> Also: sorry, Team Pierre. It is very hard for me to make Pierre sympathetic, given that I've sworn my fealty to House Kuragin. (I feel like I make this disclaimer a lot? Honestly, being unfair to Pierre and Andrey are kind of my calling cards by now.)

It was slow going from there, but steady. Every day, Anatole managed to stay awake a few minutes longer, shivered slightly less. Fedya spoke with the widow downstairs and arranged for her to have food sent up a few times a day, in exchange for thirty rubles a week. The most Fedya could afford. Army pensions weren’t generous, not even for war heroes. Hélène, hearing of this, immediately dragged Fedya downstairs to apologize, then pressed two hundred rubles into the widow’s hand herself. The widow’s eyes widened. Hélène added another fifty to the stack, accompanied by her most charming smile. From that moment, Fedya noted, the food improved.

At first, Anatole couldn’t keep down anything solid. Even too much water too quickly caused him to vomit. He’d been restricted to broth for days, and small sips of water every few hours. Then real soup, once he could hold a spoon. By the end of the week, he could manage half a bowl of the widow’s stew, thick with mutton and barley and vegetables from the garden out back. It was quick progress. Fedya hadn’t expected this for weeks. Anatole didn’t seem to be gaining weight, despite it all. That would take time. But a breath of color returned to his skin, chasing out the grey tinge that had haunted him.

One morning, Fedya woke early. Hélène slept still, on the couch pressed against the wall. She got so little sleep these days that Fedya was careful not to disturb her as he sat up, shrugging off the fur coat he used as a blanket. Glancing toward the bed, he saw that Anatole was already awake. Fedya stood and approached him, saying nothing.

Anatole sat up in bed, holding his right hand in front of him. Palm up, fingers extended and together. He tilted his head to the side, considering. The hand jerked now and again, as if blown by the wind. But between the sparks, it stayed steady. Anatole’s expression, eyes focused and lips tight, conveyed a grim satisfaction.

“How long have you been doing that?” Fedya asked quietly, from the end of the bed.

“Few minutes,” Anatole said, not looking up.

“That’s good,” Fedya said. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the footboard. Another sign of progress. He could do this, now, be this close, and Anatole barely seemed to notice. “Don’t push it too hard.”

“I’m going to walk,” Anatole said.

“The doctor says so. Soon, too, if you don’t do anything stupid.”

“Today.”

Fedya blinked. Today. Jesus. One good day, and Anatole thought that meant he could do anything. For a moment, he considered waking Hélène. She could talk Anatole down better than Fedya could. But he’d leaned on her enough. He was an equal partner in this, or should have been. He was trying to be.

“Tolya, that’s exactly what I meant by _anything stupid_.”

Anatole clicked his tongue against his teeth. “I can do this, can’t I?” he said, nodding at his hand. “So I can do that, too. You’ll see.”

Fedya sighed. He hated the role this situation had put him in, the one who had to tell Anatole no. Holding a hand steady was one thing, but the memory of Anatole in the cell still haunted him, the way his legs had given out beneath the slightest pressure. Two bowls of soup weren’t enough to recover from that. A week wasn’t enough time. But the determination in Anatole’s eyes was stubborn as a child’s.

Anatole shouldn’t have been walking. But he was going to try anyway, and there was nothing Fedya could do to stop him, other than make sure he didn’t hurt himself. Fedya had never been able to stop Anatole, once he made up his mind.

“All right,” he said, and sighed. “We’ll try this afternoon. I’ll find you a cane.”

Anatole scowled, which startled Fedya into a laugh. He hadn’t meant to. Anatole didn’t deserve being laughed at, but that look had taken Fedya by surprise. It was Anatole before the war, every inch of it. It was the same scowl Anatole wore when Fedya pointed out that they couldn’t possibly defect from the army and spend a two-year holiday on the beach in Hungary, because Hungary was landlocked. It filled Fedya with a surge of affection, for the petulant, easily affronted man he loved.

“I’m not using a _cane_ ,” Anatole said.

“What were you planning on using?”

“My legs.”

“And when you fall and break your ankle, who’s going to splint up your leg?” Fedya teased. “Not me.”

“I won’t fall.”

Fedya raised both his hands in surrender. “Fine,” he said. “You won’t fall. But I’ll find the cane anyway.”

“What’s going on?” Hélène asked, stretching and sitting up on the couch.

“Your brother’s the most stubborn idiot this side of the Volga,” Fedya said over his shoulder.

“Sorry,” Hélène said, and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “I should have specified. I meant, what’s new.”

 

* * *

 

Midafternoon sun spilled through the window into Fedya’s flat. Bright and cold, like a star trapped in ice. Anatole sat on the edge of the bed, gripping the side of the mattress with both hands. A simple wooden cane leaned against the wall near the bed, but he refused to look at it. Both Fedya and Hélène stood a few feet away, watching. Fedya put his arm around Hélène’s waist, needing to hold onto something. His nerves had borne cannon fire, screaming horses and dying men, a sky full of fire. He wasn’t sure his nerves could bear this.

“If now’s not the right time—” Hélène began.

Anatole flicked one hand in her direction, like shooing away a fly. “I can do this.”

But he remained there still, sitting petrified on the edge of the bed. And Fedya knew why. If he couldn’t do it, if he failed, what would that prove him to be? Weak. Pathetic. A child who didn’t know his own limits, who should let other people judge what he was capable of.

Though most of Moscow wouldn’t believe it, Fedya could be as supportive as anyone. With his mother, his sister, his fellow soldiers in the war. He could rattle off empty platitudes about strength and determination, hold a hurt friend’s hand as they screamed under the surgeon’s knife. He could be soft. Gentle. Encouraging. But this was Anatole. And if Anatole wanted to walk, Fedya knew exactly how to get him to do it.

“I’ll bet you can’t,” he said.

Anatole glanced at him, a note of irritation in his eyes. “What would you know about it, eh?”

“Fifty rubles says you can’t make it to the other side of the room,” Fedya said.

“Fedya, honestly—” Hélène snapped.

“Done,” Anatole said. Without giving himself another moment to second-guess it, he pushed himself off the bed and stood.

Fedya stopped breathing.

Anatole looked so small, standing there alone. An impossible apparition, standing on matchstick legs, the cut along his cheek hardening into a scar. His fingers spread wide, holding nothing. A breath would have knocked him over.

But he was standing.

Fedya could see the thoughts whirling through Anatole’s mind, behind his eyes. He saw the twitch of Anatole’s heel, trying to coax movement into a leg that wasn’t listening. Then Anatole closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and sighed.

“Fedya,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Hand me the fucking cane.”

A year ago, Fedya would have crowed _I told you so_ to the rooftops of Moscow. Now, he squeezed Hélène’s hand briefly, then darted across the room and handed the cane to Anatole.

Anatole gripped it with both hands and leaned heavily on it, catching his breath. Then—and Fedya could barely believe his eyes when he saw it—a faint smile flickered across his mouth.

“Go to hell, Fedya,” he said.

In that moment, Fedya knew he’d make it.

It took him nearly five minutes to make it from the bed to the couch on the other side of the room. An awkward, halting gait, leaning heavily on the cane for every step. Finally, Anatole collapsed onto the couch, leaning his head against the back. His breath was ragged, his brow misted with sweat, and he pressed one hand to his ribs as though they pained him. But the smile hadn’t faded.

“You,” he said, breathless, “owe me fifty _goddamn_ rubles.”

“All right,” Hélène said, laughing. “You win. Happy?” She sat on the couch beside Anatole and took the cane from him, setting it on the floor. Then, she took his hand and kissed him on the cheek, half rebuke and half congratulation.

“Hélène?” came a voice from the door.

Fedya’s gaze whipped toward the doorway. Hélène gripped Anatole’s hand harder.

Two people stood in the doorway to Fedya’s flat, staring with shock at the trio near the couch. A young woman, small and delicate, wearing an elegant white fur that made her look ethereal. And a large, broad-chested man in a rumpled greatcoat, wearing spectacles bent slightly askew.

Pierre and Natasha, hand in hand, looked in shock at Anatole on the sofa.

Fedya swore under his breath. They weren’t ready for this. They weren’t.

But that didn’t matter now.

 

* * *

 

Anatole froze. His mouth opened, but no words came out, no sound, no breath. Whether it was from exertion or fear, or both, he wasn’t sure, but the edges of his vision shimmered, until the world looked unfamiliar, stretched, strange.

The whisper in the back of his mind told him he should recognize the man in the doorway, the large man staring at him as if looking at a ghost.

The rest of his mind had spiraled off, dragging him along after, and he couldn’t stop it.

_when I tell you I must talk to you_

broad hands wrapped around his throat, choking off his breath, and

_We were going to make this easy, but_

what, no, don’t, stop it—

and his body flung against the desk, broad hands pinning him

_but now I think we’ll take our time_

_and I don’t know what deprives me_

be still, it isn’t real, you aren’t there—

and he couldn’t breathe, could only feel the hot mist of laughter against his throat, and the room was so warm and so small and hands, hands around his throat, and

_and I don’t know what deprives me of the pleasure of_

_oh pretty one, that was a mistake_

choking him a man’s palm pressed against his mouth and he couldn’t think couldn’t speak couldn’t breathe he _couldn’t fucking breathe—_

“Anatole, Anatole, look at me. Anatole, right here. Look.”

Two fingers snapped in front of his eyes. He flinched and pulled back, despite the sharp pain jolting through his side. The room still swam with fog, but he could hear the voice, and he clung to the voice like air.

“Can you hear me? Nod if you can hear me.”

He didn’t know who it was, but he could hear them. He nodded.

“Good. You’re safe. I’m right here. Just breathe. All right? In—”

He breathed in.

“Good. Now breathe out.”

He did.

The voice knew what it was doing. Talking him through one breath at a time, slower and slower, until he felt the cloud start to shiver and lift. When the room came back into focus, he felt drained, too tired even to think. And Fedya knelt in front of him, holding both Anatole’s hands in his. Fedya, his callused hands, his dark hair, his sharp eyes and his handsome mouth. Fedya, holding Anatole’s hands, guiding his breath. Anatole gasped, like a man pulled from the ocean, and sank forward. He pressed his forehead against Fedya’s hands, so cold against the burning in his head.

“Fedya,” he murmured.

“I’m right here. I promise.”

Anatole felt the tears in his chest, but he was too tired to let them fall. Everything hurt already, without that. “It’s never going to get better, is it?” he said.

Fedya squeezed his hands and softly kissed the top of his head. “It will,” he said. “It already is.”

 

* * *

 

Pierre’s eyes widened. None of this made sense. None of it was possible.

Anatole was dead. He’d received the message himself.

But the boy was here, looking half-dead already, gaunt and shaken and breathless, in Dolokhov’s cheap, filthy flat. And that sound, when Anatole caught sight of Pierre. The rattle of his breath, as all the color drained from his face. It was as if Pierre had become transparent, another world shining through his body. He’d never seen a man look that way before. The closest he could recall was when Andrey had visited last year, how pale he’d looked then, how sad, how lost and alone.

Even then, Andrey had not looked like this.

“Natasha,” he said, and squeezed her hand. “Perhaps you should wait downstairs.”

“No,” Hélène said.

She stood up from the couch, moving with alarming speed toward Pierre at the doorway. Behind her, Pierre saw Dolokhov watch her walk away, then swear under his breath. Dolokhov knelt in front of Anatole, murmuring something, holding both his hands. Anatole barely seemed to hear. He was still looking somewhere beyond Pierre. His breath still came far too fast.

“You brought her, _husband_ ,” Hélène said. “You brought your charming little toy, let her see. You see, Countess, what it’s like to love someone for more than a week? What it’s like to love someone when it’s hard?”

Natasha pressed one hand to her mouth. With effort, she looked away from Anatole, meeting Hélène’s eyes. “I didn’t know,” she said. “What’s the matter with him?”

Pierre winced. He knew Hélène. This had been the wrong question to ask.

Sure enough, Hélène ignored Natasha. In this moment, she had eyes only for Pierre.

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” Hélène pressed one finger into Pierre’s chest, driving him back a step. "To catch us out?"

He could have overpowered her in a second, but the force of her anger had cowed him. And the sight of Anatole on the couch, frozen as Dolokhov snapped two fingers in front of his eyes and coached him through his breath, that was enough to drain the fight from Pierre.

“That’s not why we came,” he said. “You were in the house for twenty minutes and you wouldn’t speak to me, and then you left for a week. And when I heard you’d come here—”

“You thought Fedya and I were going behind your back," she said. "You want to catch us and divorce me, so you and Natasha can marry, you and perfect Natasha, who have never hurt anybody in your lives. Is that it?”

It sounded awful, in Hélène’s words. It sounded worse, because she wasn’t wrong. He had thought, and he’d said to Natasha, _adultery is grounds for divorce, my darling, and while I hate to ask you, it would mean that, if you were a witness, it would be official, and you and I, we could—_ He despised himself again, as he hadn’t for weeks.

Over Hélène’s shoulder, Anatole’s eyes flickered back into focus, and he slumped forward, resting his head in Dolokhov’s hands. With tenderness Pierre hadn’t thought possible from the cruel soldier who’d once lived in his home, Dolokhov kissed the top of Anatole’s head. Then he sat beside him on the couch, rubbing gentle circles into Anatole's thin back.

Pierre had thought he knew everything. Suddenly, he realized how little he understood.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was alive?” Pierre asked quietly. “I could have helped.”

Hélène’s laugh sounded like a gunshot. “My brother was tortured, husband _._ He hasn’t slept one night through without screaming. Nightmares about brutish men like you, men who threaten him and assault him and hurt him. And you wonder why I didn’t ask you for help?”

It wasn’t fair. Hélène didn’t know. She didn’t know what Natasha had gone through. What Anatole had done to hurt her, this innocent young woman who had only wanted to love someone she could trust. Pierre had been justified, in everything he’d done.

He believed this, with all his heart. But in the moment, it didn’t seem to matter.

Pierre glanced over again at Anatole. The boy sat up now, looking back at him. The color had not returned to his face, and his startling eyes were entirely too large for his thin face. Natasha gripped Pierre’s hand until it ached his knuckles, but he didn’t flinch.

Anatole had always been easy to understand, Pierre thought. Uncomplicated. You got what was on the surface, because he was capable of nothing but surfaces. Now, seeing the ghosts in Anatole’s eyes, seeing the way he held Dolokhov’s hand with fierce indifference to Pierre’s shock, Pierre wondered if he’d ever known Anatole at all.

“Pierre, old man,” Anatole said. His voice was hoarse, and quieter than usual.

“Anatole,” Pierre said. “It’s…it’s good to see you.”

Anatole’s breath escaped him in one gust, somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. “Mm.”

Pierre flushed and turned away, back to Hélène. His wife watched him with folded arms and no hint of forgiveness.

“Wouldn’t he be more comfortable in our house?” he asked.

“I’m not bringing him under your roof.”

“Let me send someone, then. A doctor, some of the servants—”

“We have a doctor,” Hélène interrupted. “And we’re managing without your servants. He needs me, and he needs Fedya, but he doesn’t need you.”

Dolokhov had said nothing to Pierre since he entered the room. But from the fierce glint in his black eyes, he was in perfect agreement with Hélène.

He saw, suddenly, how they must see him. Pierre the brute, Pierre the monster. An incomplete picture, a cruel one, deliberately cruel. But who was to say they were wrong? He’d shot Dolokhov in the shoulder and left him bleeding there in the dirt. He’d pinned Anatole to a desk by the throat and threatened to smash his head to pieces. And Hélène…

What happened between Pierre and Hélène, he’d keep between himself and the Lord until the day he died.

“Natasha, we should go,” Pierre said.

He turned, but Natasha, still holding his hand, hung back. She lingered there in the doorway a moment, looking at Anatole. The battered wreck of the man she’d once thought she loved. Her handsome prince, now a trembling shadow. Pierre wanted to pull her through the door, hurry her into the street. But he couldn’t, not in front of Hélène. Not as Natasha stepped forward into the room, toward Anatole. She thought she looked bold, determined, vengeful. She looked, to Pierre, very young.

“Tolya,” Dolokhov said softly. A warning.

Anatole brushed this off. “Countess Natalya,” he said. The faint hint of a smile edged into his eyes.

Pierre couldn’t fathom how he managed it. After what he’d done, to smile like that. That look made Pierre want to strike Anatole straight across the face, strike the insolence out of him. He could almost feel it, the flat of his hand against Anatole’s cheek, the way the skin would flush red with the impact, the cry of pain.

Pierre, frightened, stowed his hands in his pockets. They had made him this way. It had been different, once. He wasn’t _like this._

“Prince Anatole,” Natasha said.

“You look well, Natalie,” Anatole said quietly.

Natasha spat at his feet. Pierre stared. It had never occurred to him, somehow, that Natasha could spit. It was a dirty gesture. A cruel one. Like a soldier in the field. Like something Hélène would do.

“You ruined my life,” Natasha said to Anatole.

Anatole looked at her exquisite fur, at the flush of color in her healthy cheeks, at Pierre, at the way Pierre looked at her. “Yes,” he said, and nodded. “Yes, I can see that.”

Now it was Natasha who hurried Pierre from the room.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sidebar: I adore how this fandom has just collectively decided that Aline Kuragina is dead, despite all evidence. I wrote a part for her in this and everything. And then, well. Nope.

“Fedya, for Christ’s sake,” Anatole said.

Fedya flinched and turned away from the window. It was beautiful, even through the dirty glass. One of the rare Moscow winter days when the sun broke through the clouds, shedding an hour or two of brilliance over the city. It wouldn’t last. Nearly noon already; little hope of sunlight left. The glow had distracted him, though he hadn’t noticed it happening. He hadn’t heard anything either Anatole or Hélène said in who knew how long.

Anatole was sitting on the sofa, beside Hélène, watching Fedya with cold eyes. Two weeks after his return, he had full—if slow—command of Fedya’s room. He sat with his legs folded underneath him. Thin as he was, it gave him the look of a praying mantis.

“What?” Fedya said.

“If you want to leave, you can leave,” Anatole said. His laugh was aimed to hurt Fedya. It did. “Both of you. I can _manage_.”

Fedya looked at Anatole, who gave him a what-do-you-want-from-me raise of the eyebrows in return. Two weeks ago, Fedya would have told Anatole no, flat out. But now, Anatole seemed _alive_ again. Not recovered, but recovering. Tense, easily annoyed, but then, he’d always been that. And while Pierre’s arrival seemed to have made the nightmares worse, it was daylight now. The dreams would wait, if Fedya and Hélène ducked out for an afternoon.

Fedya loathed being inside. Always had. In the Imperial Army, Fedya had always had the sky above his head, the earth beneath his feet, air in his lungs. And as a child, he’d roved the city like a menace, finding new streets to get into trouble on. He’d do anything for Anatole, twice as much as he’d already done. But he hadn’t left this room in nearly two weeks.

“Go,” Anatole repeated. “Enjoy.”

He made a sweeping gesture with one hand toward the door. In that motion, the bitterness was impossible to miss. The irony, something cold and almost cruel. Anatole knew the situation full well. Fedya and Hélène could walk through the door, down the stairs, and into the world. It was nothing to them. It was impossible, for Anatole, being as ill as he was. He wanted them to be honest about the difference. So Fedya would stop glancing through the window like sunlight was a pocket-sized sin, when he could leave at any moment.

Hélène sighed, then kissed Anatole on the cheek and stood up. “Just for a few hours,” she said.

He’d told them to. And he’d be safe here. But that wasn’t enough to shake the guilt from Fedya’s shoulders as he shrugged on his coat. He looked back to see Anatole watching with something between expectation and bitterness.

“If you need—” Fedya began.

“God damn it, Fedya,” Anatole snapped. “You’re going outside, not to America. I assume you’ll come _back._ ”

Fedya raised his hands in surrender. “Two hours,” he said, and left.

Out in the street, Fedya swore and squinted hard against the blinding light. Hélène twined her arm through his, looking like a husband and wife out for a morning walk. She glanced behind them at Fedya’s building, at the window over the street—too dirty to see through. Then, with a sigh, she turned back to Fedya.

“Any ideas?” she said.

“One,” Fedya said.

 

* * *

 

Technically, what Fedya planned to do was illegal.

The park had an established purpose, and this wasn’t it. Its tended woods and neat gardens were for genteel aristocrats to stroll through, giving them an artificial taste of the countryside. However, there weren’t exactly _signs_ forbidding former soldiers from turning up with a bottle of vodka and a pistol. And if you didn’t want Fedya Dolokhov to do a thing, you had to be very specific.

He stood at the end of a sweeping lawn, buried in a crust of snow, near the fringe of trees. Hélène had brushed off a bench nearby and took practiced sips of vodka straight from the bottle. Her hat had slipped askew, creating a rakish air that almost made Fedya smile. She watched as Fedya flicked back the hammer of the pistol and took aim at the tree some thirty yards away.

“This is a public park, Fedya,” she said.

“I have eyes,” he said, not taking them off the tree.

She groaned and took another drink. “You’re going to kill someone by accident.”

“It’s never an accident,” Fedya said grimly.

He thought of the clearing where he and Pierre had dueled, that early morning years ago. Nothing above but the moon, nothing below but that perfect expanse of white. Like dueling on a sheet of paper, surrounded by void. To think Pierre believed it made sense to challenge Fedya Dolokhov. If _having slept with Hélène Kuragina_ was his criteria, Pierre could have faced a dozen different men from forty paces.

He scowled, thinking of the shameful way Pierre held his gun, and fired. The shot went off perfectly. Dead center of the tree. A clump of starlings burst into the sky, chattering angrily in the bullet’s wake.

“Good shot,” Hélène said, watching the birds. And then, as if continuing a conversation in progress, “We shouldn’t have left him.”

“He needs time away from us, Lena,” Fedya said, reloading. “He’s not a child. He’s allowed to want that.”

“I know that.” She sighed, took another swallow of vodka, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Have I told you how our mother died?”

Fedya blinked, then slid the gun into his belt. It was the very devil, following Hélène’s train of thought when she was upset. One idea jumped to the next without any pattern, without any link he could discern. It was like trying to speak French after six shots of vodka. And she hadn’t told him that, as she knew perfectly well. She told him nothing. What he knew of Hélène’s childhood he’d learned from Anatole, who was only too happy to talk.

Even so. Fedya knew Aline Kuragina died when Anatole was six, but only because everyone knew that. Anatole had never mentioned it. Not once.

He sat down beside her on the bench. Hélène leaned against him, her elbow to his thigh. She wasn’t drunk. But there was something careless in the way she brushed against him. He let her, without comment. God knew he’d made worse decisions around her over the years.

“Anatole and Ippolyt were alone with her,” she said. “I asked Papa to take me to my dancing lesson instead, so Mama could stay home with them. I did it on purpose,” she added, glancing back at the sky, at the last starling vanishing behind the trees. “Papa was kinder to me than to the boys. I wanted to give them a few hours of peace.”

She rested her head against his shoulder now. Her hat had fallen off, and lay dusted with snow at their feet. More on instinct than anything, he reached over and smoothed her hair. It was as soft as he remembered.

“Lena,” he said, “don’t blame yourself for that.”

“I don’t,” she said. “I was eight. I’m just telling you.”

Fedya sighed and kissed the top of her head. She curled her legs up sideways on the bench, nestled now within the curve of Fedya’s arm. It was so easy to slip back into the thoughtless intimacy they had before. Though he knew he’d never love her, not that way, it felt comforting. A warmth in his chest he didn’t care to interrogate. Hélène didn’t need him to explain. She wanted to be held, and she wanted him to listen.

“She was pregnant again,” Hélène said. “Stupid, really. Even I knew she was ruined for children. She was in labor with Anatole for twenty hours, then she had three miscarriages in six years. They already had two boys. Only an idiot or my father would want her to try again.”

Her breath hung heavy in the air between them as she spoke. She spoke her next words to her feet.

“Anatole heard the scream. Walked in on Mama bleeding on the floor. When Papa and I got back, the doctor was there, but she was dead. We burned the carpet. The stain wouldn’t come out.”

Fedya shivered. He could see it. Anatole as a skinny, silver-haired child, standing in the doorway, eyes wide. Staring at the pool of blood spreading across the carpet, inching closer to his toes. And Hélène, coming home to the aftermath. Knowing that whenever she left him alone—whether he was six or twenty-three when she did it—it ended in this, in pain on both sides, and a whispering feeling that she could have stopped it.

“He slept in my bed for a year,” she said, still looking at her feet. “Held onto me all night. He thought it might happen to me, too, because I was a girl. Christ, Fedya. I left him to go through that alone. He was six.”

“And you were eight,” Fedya said.

She pulled away and looked at him. Eyes narrowed. “Yes. That’s how time works.”

“You’re talking like it only happened to him,” he said, a heavy pain in his chest. “It’s you, too. All of this, it’s happening to you, and me.”

For a moment, Fedya thought she might cry. Something moved behind her eyes, something that might have been a crack in her mask.

“You don’t have to pretend for me,” he said. “It’s all right to admit it’s hard.”

The movement was gone, quick as it came. She stood up, swept up her hat and shook out the snow before tossing it back on her head. She extended a hand, which Fedya stared at.

“Give me the gun,” she said.

He did, without question. Fedya hovered behind her as she moved where he’d stood before, staring down the tree. He started to guide her into the proper stance, but there was no need. Hélène aimed his pistol like a natural. She angled her body into the shot, as comfortably as another woman might have held a baby. Dancing and dueling: two graceful, mercenary skills she and her brothers could manage like no one else. He should have known, really.

She fired. Once. Twice. Three times. Again. She emptied Fedya’s pistol, shot after shot. All dead center in the middle of the tree.

She turned back to Fedya, handing him the empty pistol. He wondered if you could call it weeping, if the tears didn’t quite fall.

“You’re right,” she said. “That does help.”

Without thinking of anything but the sadness in her eyes and the echo of gunshots, Fedya tossed the gun aside and kissed Hélène. She kissed him back, not with the old passion, but with something softer. More like snow than fire. It wasn’t love. Fedya had felt love, now, and he knew this wasn’t it. It wasn’t even desire. He didn’t know what it was. But it felt right, even without knowing.

Hélène broke away and looked at him with a flash of amusement. “We’ve been over this,” she said. “I’m not your type.”

Fedya flushed. “It’s complicated.”

Hélène laughed and bent down, picking up the pistol from the snow. “Darling,” she said, handing it to him, “we’re Russian. Everything’s complicated.”

 

* * *

 

When Levin entered Captain Dolokhov’s flat that afternoon, he thought, for a moment, it was the wrong room. He took off his spectacles and cleaned them against his shirt. But when he replaced them, the scene was the same.

Anatole sat on top of Dolokhov’s desk, his legs folded like a sage. He leaned back against the wall, and a book rested on his lap, open about twenty pages in. Levin could still remember how Prince Anatole Kuragin looked before the war, the way every head in a ballroom turned to watch his entrance. They had a long way to go yet, before that. But there was a steadiness to him that hadn’t been there before. Though Anatole was still startlingly thin, Levin expected his limbs would start to lose their fragility by the end of the month. The worst of the hollows had already left his face.

And he’d washed, too, properly. His hair, now its old unearthly silver, stuck jauntily up in its old manner. Levin wondered if the style wasn’t actually an affectation at all, merely the way it lay naturally. Or if Anatole were really vain enough to spend his convalescent energy fixing his hair. Both, he thought, were possible.

Anatole glanced up at Levin. “Good morning,” he said.

Levin stared another moment, then sat on the end of the bed. “Morning,” he said. “You look—”

“Mad?” Anatole asked. “I know. I’ve had it with beds. Thought, maybe, a change of scene?”

“I was going to say _better_.”

“Yes, well,” Anatole said. “I suppose you’d know.”

He set the book aside and leaned forward, taking the edge of the desk in both hands. Levin started to explain there was no call to move, but before he could, Anatole had slid down to his feet. He reached for the cane, leaning against the wall, and made his way to the chair opposite the bed. When he sat down, his breath was slightly labored, but he seemed otherwise steady.

“Now you’re showing off,” Levin said.

Anatole laughed. “A little.”

“Captain Dolokhov and the Countess…” Levin began.

“Out,” Anatole said tersely.

“Did they say where?”

“No,” Anatole said, “but I know them. Hélène’s gone for a drink, and Fedya’s gone to shoot something. Why, do you need them?”

“No,” Levin said. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you. Alone.”

A flicker of suspicion drifted through Anatole’s face. He glanced at the door, which Levin had left open. His earlier ease now hardened slightly, he nodded.

“Go ahead,” he said, his voice tense. “I can’t walk out on you, can I?”

Levin paused. “I wanted to ask how you’re coping,” he said.

“You want to know if I’m still crazy,” Anatole said. His hand traveled almost without thinking to his cane. As if, at his pace, storming out of the room were possible. “You, Lena, Fedya, Pierre, all of you, you think I’m mad.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Levin said. He made a mental note to ask the countess what in God’s name had happened with her husband, that made Anatole say his name with such venom. “The opposite, in fact. Your symptoms are common in people who have undergone severe, invasive trauma…”

“People who were raped,” Anatole said coldly. “The least you can do is say it.”

Levin knew Anatole expected him to blush and turn away. But over a twenty-year career, Levin had learned a trick or two. He’d built a reputation for being discreet, earning him something of a specialty in the area. He told no one his patients didn’t want to be told, knowing a wrong word in the wrong ear could shatter a person’s reputation. He dealt with pregnancies too when asked, quietly and without judgment. His patients were women, almost exclusively, but he knew that wasn’t the whole truth of the matter. It was a question of shame, in part, not of need. Levin suspected, from the gentle affection he’d noted between Anatole and Dolokhov, that the prince would be different, in that respect.

No, Levin knew what needed to be done. And if Anatole wanted to be blunt, very well, Levin could give him blunt.

“Yes,” Levin said. “Your reactions aren’t unexpected among rape survivors. And, given the circumstances, I’m assuming it didn’t happen just once.”

Anatole stared, surprised Levin had followed his lead. Then he shook his head. It was as if he’d removed himself from the narrative entirely, talking instead about a stranger. “No,” he said, almost academically. “It was more than once. I don’t know how many times.”

“That’s all right,” Levin said. “No one’s asking you to know that.”

Anatole closed his eyes. The sound that escaped him wasn’t quite a laugh. “Do you know,” he said, “I’ve been here for two weeks, having these dreams, having these, I don’t know, whatever they are—”

“Flashbacks, Captain Dolokhov says.”

And Captain Dolokhov would know, Levin thought. When Dolokhov had called at his house near the Bolshoi after his tour in the Caucuses, he’d sworn Levin to total confidence about his own flashes of memory. No one else needed to know, unless Dolokhov decided to tell.

“Yes, all right, these flashbacks,” Anatole said irritably. He pushed a hand through his hair, spiking it into a studied disarray even Levin had to admit suited him. “And for two weeks, no one’s said the word around me. Not once. No one will even admit it _happened_.”

Levin let him speak, and did not interrupt.

Anatole swore, then stood. Leaning on the cane, he moved to the window and stood with his back against the pane, half-sitting on the sill. The light caught him strangely there. Unevenly. He didn’t seem entirely human.

There’d been no need to move, but Levin wouldn’t fight him. Anatole had lost the ability to do it for six months, then fought tooth and nail to scratch it back. Levin had already noted that Anatole couldn’t seem to sit still. Fingers drumming, foot shaking, cracking one knuckle after the other, almost nonstop. Anxiety and close quarters were making him edgy. Let him move, if it helped.

Anatole leaned his head against the window and regarded Levin at a disdainful angle. “How do people usually work through this?” he asked, not without irony. “In your expert opinion?”

Levin had practiced medicine too long to take Anatole’s tone personally. “Talking generally helps,” he said.

Anatole sighed and leaned his cheek against the window, closing his eyes. “With who?”

“Captain Dolokhov, or—”

“Not Fedya,” Anatole said. “Or Lena. They’ll think of it, then. Every time they touch me, they’ll think of it. I can’t bear that.”

Levin tried not to think about what Anatole meant by _every time they touch me_. He’d heard the rumors, everyone in Moscow had. But asking for clarification was like kicking a hornet’s nest. Clearly Anatole would feel no shame in telling Levin more than he wanted to know.

“So, not them,” Anatole said. “And I don’t see anyone else.”

“You see me,” Levin said.

Anatole stared. “You,” he repeated.

Abashed, Levin kept talking. “Of course, I understand if you’d rather not speak with another man about this. I know a woman in Nikitsky Boulevard who offers a listening ear for cases like yours. Out of religious conviction, I think.”

Something flashed through Anatole’s expression that Levin didn’t understand. It almost seemed like a smile. “Does your saint of Nikitsky Boulevard have a name?” he asked.

“Madame Akrosimova,” Levin said.

Anatole cracked up laughing.

It was genuine laughter, not cruel. Levin remembered the prince sounding like this the last time their paths had crossed, years ago. Light, brilliant, easy to please. Shimmering with amusement, as though Anatole were delighted to live in a world this absurd.

“You’re _joking,_ ” he said, though his voice still broke with the laugh. “Marya Dmitrievna? I’d rather tell my secrets to a starving wolf.”

“You two have a history?”

“Doctor, she wants my head mounted on her wall for Christmas.”

“Ah,” Levin said, with what, in his mind, was a tremendous amount of tact.

Anatole looked down at his hands. His brash confidence had abandoned him as quick as it came. In that moment, he seemed unsettlingly young. Levin could see how he must have been as a child, growing up in Petersburg. Quick to laugh, and reckless, and easily frightened, and looking for someone—anyone—to help him decide what to do. But no one could make the choice for him, not this time.

He bit his lip, teetering on the edge of a decision. It reminded Levin of a man on a bridge, looking down at a slate-gray river rushing past, and thinking, _well._

“If you really do mean it,” he said finally. “Talking to you, sometimes. You think it might help, eh?”

Levin smiled. “I think it might,” he said. “Is there a day that best suits your—”

Anatole laughed. The child burst through again in that shimmering sunlit laugh. “I’ve been legally dead for six months,” he said. “My calendar is very open.”

“Come by my home next Thursday, then. Seven o’clock.” Levin paused, then gave Anatole a wry look. “I regret to inform you, however, that my governess has been sacked. For lewd behavior.”

Anatole had the grace to blush. “So hard to find good help nowadays.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback is to me what getting drunk on champagne is to Balaga: I effing love it.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I adore every single person who's commented on this fic. You give me life, and I smile like an idiot every time I get a notification.
> 
> In return, here's the most extra chapter I've ever written. I know. Indulge me.

Anatole didn’t want to resent Fedya and Hélène. Really, he didn’t. But God, it was hard not to.

They meant well, but they weren’t built for this kind of responsibility. They were laughably wrong for it, really. Not the selfless, nurturing religious devotee you’d choose to play the role. In a perfect world, someone like Mary Bolkonskaya would have been called in to help Anatole recover. Someone who yearned for a pathetic invalid to take care of, an opportunity to prove her grace and test her fortitude. That was, to put it lightly, not Fedya and Hélène’s style. They were rough, crude, reckless, self-absorbed and quick to anger. No wonder they’d fucked so often, Anatole thought in his pettier moments. It was like seducing your reflection.

They meant well, though, and they were trying. They’d been gentler, more careful than he’d had any reason to expect. And he loved them both. They didn’t deserve the anger building up within him, coiling snakelike between his ribs.

But it drove him mad, how frightened of him they were.

Don’t rush it, Fedya would say. You’re already doing so much better. If you push too far you’ll hurt yourself.

Anatole, Hélène would say, for God’s sake, slow down, there’s no rush, the world isn’t going anywhere.

And those cautious, nervous looks, after memory had swept its way through him. The way they would edge away, share a look with one another. The way they’d ask if he was all right, cautious and soft, like a hunter trying not to spook an animal.

It was infuriating. He was broken, but he wasn’t going to _break_.

He sat on the end of the bed, bouncing one foot against the floor so fast it looked like a spasm. Fedya and Hélène shared a glance, but pretended not to notice. They didn’t know the half of it. Anatole felt like his bones were crawling with ants. Sitting still drove him up a wall, and his nerves were worn to nothing. The day before, Fedya had coughed, and Anatole flinched like someone had fired a gun in the room. He had to get up, to move, to get out, to go. He couldn’t bear another day in this room, in this same room, trapped with his own thoughts.

“I want to go outside,” he said flatly. It came out wrong, petulant rather than decisive, but he stuck by it.

Fedya glanced at Hélène, which grated Anatole’s nerves. “Do you think he’s ready for that?” Fedya asked her.

Damn it. They should look at _him._

Anatole made a dismissive _tch_ and stood up. “I can stand,” he said, and spread his arms wide to demonstrate. “I’ve been pacing circles around this room for a week. Doctor Levin expects me at his house in four days. Obviously I’m ready for that.”

“It’s risky,” Hélène began—to Fedya. “But…”

Jesus Christ. Speaking to Fedya around him, as if he weren’t even there. Anatole’s anger shot out of him then, wild, hot, powerful. He couldn’t bear it, not another moment. They’d listen to him. They’d take him seriously. He’d make sure of it.

“And of course I’m not allowed to take risks,” he interrupted. “Not allowed to leave, not allowed to think, not allowed to _anything._ ”

Hélène looked at him now. She took a breath, and her hands twitched in her lap. He could see her itching to argue with him. He wished she would. He wanted her to shout, to drag him into a raging, screaming fight. He almost wanted her to hit him. In that moment, he’d fight her with everything he had. He’d even challenge Fedya, just for the thrill of throwing a punch, the powerful bloodrush of losing. Anything would be better than sitting here quietly another minute, treated like a child made of glass.

“It’s not a question of being allowed,” Hélène said.

“Isn’t it?” He gestured with one arm toward nothing. His bony elbow shot through the air sharp as a bayonet. He tried not to think about it. If it was someone else’s body, he wouldn’t need to deal with how it looked. “I haven’t seen the sun since I’ve been here, Lena. I haven’t been down the damn _stairs._ ”

Hélène stood up sharply, facing him down. “Toto, you know that’s not fair.”

It wasn’t. But _fuck_ , it felt good, to be shouting at her, their faces inches apart. Sometimes you needed that. Needed to take something in your hand and crush it, for the pleasure of seeing it shatter.

“You want to talk about fair?” he snarled. “You and Fedya can go whenever you want, and I’m locked up in here. How’s that for fair, eh?”

“Toto, Jesus, you’re not our prisoner—”

“Then stop treating me like one,” he shouted.

Hélène flinched like he’d slapped her. He heard Fedya’s breath stop.

He stood his ground, and he waited.

That was cruel. He knew it when he said it. But he wanted to win, he wanted it badly, and he’d do it by any means necessary. And it was cruel, but it wasn’t _wrong._ Another prison. Another room to lock him in. Other people—even people he loved—telling him what he could do and where he could go. The sun. God on high. He hadn’t felt the sun in seven months.

“I can either go through the door or out the window,” Anatole said coldly. “But one way or another, I’m going.”

Fedya looked at Hélène, who still stared in stunned, hurt silence. Anatole’s twinge of guilt was sharp but brief. Well, let her be hurt. One moment of selfishness in seven months. Surely he was entitled to that.

Then Fedya sighed. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll go with you.”

Anatole grinned. He’d fought, and he’d won.

He’d have to bring the cane, unfortunately. He tried not to use it anymore, at least in Fedya’s flat. But stairs were another matter entirely. God only knew what kind of help he’d need outside, too. Christ as his witness, he was not going to make Fedya carry him back up those stairs. He’d rather curl up in the street and die.

Refusing to ask for Hélène’s help, he pulled on his coat, which she had folded atop the dresser along with the rest of his clothes. As he tugged an arm into it, a dry laugh escaped him, coating his frayed nerves in black humor. Christ. This had fit him perfectly a year ago. Now, the fine-spun green wool hung loose off his shoulders, touching almost nothing on the way down. He could have fit neatly within it twice. But it was warm, and it was his, and it made him feel like himself again, if only a little. Besides, Anatole was already banking on the notion that no one he knew would come to this neighborhood. No one else would see him. No one but Fedya and Hélène, and he was well past the point of shame with them. They’d both seen him in far more compromising positions than an ill-fitting coat.

Cane in hand, jaw set, he edged his way into the hall. Hélène sat on the bed, with a sigh he heard through the open door. He ignored it, leaving her behind. It wasn’t his responsibility to apologize.

The stairs were a minefield, but he managed, leaning heavily on the banister at each step. Fedya followed one step behind. He was edgy, ready to shoot out a hand and catch Anatole by the collar if he looked likely to stumble. Anatole made a solemn vow not to fall, just to spite him.

At last, they reached the lower landing, and the front door to the street.

There, staring at the handle, Anatole hesitated.

He wanted to open the door. He did. Wanted nothing more. He’d fought for this, made Hélène hate him for this. And it had all seemed so simple in his mind. But it was infinitely more complicated in practice. He couldn’t make his hand move. Fear paralyzed him. He didn’t even know what he was afraid of. Only that the fear was fast, and sparked like lightning, and it pinned his hands to his sides.

“Well?” Fedya said quietly, behind him. “It’s up to you. In or out.”

Anatole stood there, looking at the door.

“If you’re just trying to prove me wrong, you’ve already done it,” Fedya said. “I was sure you wouldn’t make it down the stairs.”

Anatole turned, surprised, and more than a little offended. “You were?”

“Completely sure. Christ, I can’t understand how you’re even standing.”

Anatole looked at him, into Fedya’s eyes, and paused. Fedya thought Anatole was weak. A pathetic bedridden little thing, dependent on others. He’d just said so. And yet those dark, handsome eyes seemed to believe in Anatole more completely than in anything else. It didn’t make sense. Fedya was stronger than Anatole, in almost every way. He always had been. If he truly believed Anatole couldn’t do this, Fedya could have locked him in the flat, or dragged him back up the stairs, or shouted him down until he ran out of energy to fight, which frankly wouldn’t have taken long, not these days. It didn’t make sense.

“Then why did you let me try?” he asked.

Fedya gave a soft laugh and rested one hand on Anatole’s shoulder. “Love, I’m not _letting_ you do anything. You’re just _doing_ it. And I’m coming in case you need me to catch you.”

The pressure in Anatole’s chest now wasn’t panic. He knew the feeling of panic, the haze that accompanied it, the way the air seemed to turn thin. This was something else. Something softer, a heavy, navy-blue feeling. Sadness, almost. But no, that wasn’t quite right either. It hurt almost the same as sadness, but this hurt was warmer, and almost a pleasure to feel.

“I won’t fall,” he said.

“All right, so you won’t,” Fedya said. “But I’ll be here if you do.”

Anatole nodded and opened the door.

He took five steps into the street. He couldn’t take a sixth.

The world, suddenly, surrounded him.

Fresh air rushed into his lungs like a prayer. He breathed in deep, tasting it. Savoring. Cold, sharp, but not painful. The kind of cold that came with the last few weeks of winter, not carrying warmth yet, only the promise of it. The snow danced with flares of sun, piled alongside the street and weighting down the tenement rooftops. Icicles glittered from windows and doorways like a daring necklace on a bold woman. Anatole squinted against the light at first, then forced his eyes open. It hurt, but he yearned for the pain. Let the light flood in. Let it fill him, toe to top, with sun. Worth anything, to feel sunlight dance in his bones, behind his eyes, to taste it on his tongue.

Cold as the day was, his skin felt luminous. Like a sunbeam had swallowed him.

Through the light, the world whirled. A wild, fantastic patchwork, dazzling. A thousand scents, the brine of the river from somewhere beyond the buildings, the slop of mud in the gutters, a baker’s around the corner selling off the rest of the day’s bread. A raven cawed overhead, circling before coming to rest on a windowsill with its feathers pressed against the glass. Down the street, laughter. He looked. Two children, a dark-haired boy and a fair-haired girl, were playing. They scooped up snowballs and tried to pelt one another with them, most often missing by a foot or more. The girl was indignant, slush painting a snail-like trail down her back where he’d hit her. But the boy’s laughter was contagious, and in a minute she joined him. They glanced down the street at Anatole and Fedya, then turned back to the game, undisturbed.

The world still turned.

This whole, beautiful world.

Anatole hadn’t set foot in this wild, vast, beautiful world in seven months.

He looked up at the sky, cloudless blue and freezing, and realized he had never truly thought about it before, the way the sky seemed to go on forever.

He braced himself with the cane and took another deep breath. It shuddered on the exhale, catching on something he didn’t understand.

Fedya leaned against him slightly, their shoulders just touching. He reached out and took Anatole’s free hand. Anatole squeezed it back. Fedya was his anchor, mooring him to the ground. Without that hand, Anatole might simply drift away, up into that endless expanse of unbounded sky, and vanish into the blue.

“It’s quiet this morning,” Fedya said.

A simple sentence. It broke something Anatole had been holding behind his ribs. A delicate thing, precarious and glass-fragile.

Anatole sank to his knees and wept.

It was the first time he’d cried since his release. Since the war. Since before that. When had he cried last? He couldn’t remember. Over something stupid, something small and unimportant—over Natasha, he realized, and almost laughed wild through tears at the thought, because not long ago, _that_ had been the end of the world.

Since his release, Anatole had felt fear. Anger. He’d screamed. He’d fought. He’d pushed himself until his vision shivered, pushed to his limits and passed them as if he deserved the pain of exertion somehow. But he hadn’t cried.

The heaviness, the dense blue weight wrapped itself around him, and he cried, and he felt, in that moment, for the first time, free.

“Anatole,” Fedya said.

Fedya knelt beside him. Close enough to touch. Ignoring the snow seeping through his trousers, the fabric of his coat. The space between them big enough for a breath, nothing more.

“Can I—”

Anatole nodded, then embraced Fedya with all his strength. A sob leapt from his throat with a sharpness that, briefly, startled the children in their game.

Fedya was so strong. Stable. Rooted to the earth, reliable and unmovable. Anatole wept into his shoulder, and Fedya gently massaged a loose circle against his back, and Fedya was warm, and real, and he smelled like cheap soap and vodka and the thick tang of old leather, and Anatole cried until he’d cried enough for six months, for a year, for everything. And through it all, Fedya held him. Saying nothing, saying everything. _I’m not letting you come or go, you’re just doing it, but I’m here. I’m here now. I’m right here when you want to come home._

They stayed that way a long time.

When Anatole finally pulled away, he realized he hadn’t been the only one who’d wept.

He cleared his throat, then smiled, a childlike smile, a little abashed. Fedya rose, then extended a hand to help Anatole to his feet. Even emptied out from crying, humming hollow, he felt steadier on his legs than before.

“I’m going to stay out a while,” Anatole said. “Just to see.”

Fedya nodded. Without another word, he bent down and picked up the cane. Anatole took it from him, then walked on his own to the end of the street, to a small bench at the corner overlooking both the street and the river. He sat there, and Fedya sat beside him, and Anatole leaned his head on Fedya’s shoulder.

They stayed there, saying nothing, for nearly an hour, until Anatole sneezed, and they both decided it was too cold to remain any longer. It was winter in Russia, after all. The sun would be gone soon, but it would come back. The world would be there the next day, and the next.

Fedya kissed the inside of Anatole’s wrist, where a ring of scars still lingered, and they made their way back to the house.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In 19th century Russia, we...anachronistically go to therapy? I don't know, friends. It felt right.
> 
> TW for some violence in the second section.

Alone in the back of the carriage, Anatole felt like he’d entered a world without gravity. Everything seemed strange, stretched, impermanent. At half past six, the sun had long since sunk behind the rooftops, and smoky gaslight burnished the streets. He leaned against the window, feeling the cool glass against his brow, watching the shadowed city.

Hélène had offered to join him, of course. She had watched while Anatole pulled on his coat, laced his boots with relentless concentration. Anatole ignored her. There was no room for self-doubt, not now. This was hard enough. If he saw skepticism in Hélène’s eyes, he’d lose his nerve, and he wouldn’t go.

“You’re sure you’ll be all right?” Hélène asked.

Anatole finished the lace on his left boot. “Well,” he said, “if not, I’m already on my way to the doctor.”

Hélène sighed, then stole a glance at Fedya. Anatole did too, then laughed. Fedya had sprawled out across the sofa, feet kicked up on the arm, nose buried in a rubbish six-kopek adventure novel. The prospect of Anatole going out alone seemed so mundane he couldn’t bring himself to look up. It was an act, of course, designed to boost Anatole’s confidence. But it worked.

“Let him go, Lena,” Fedya said, turning the page. “If he’s not back in five hours, we’ll send a policeman after him.”

Hélène sighed, then embraced Anatole, kissing him on the cheek. Their fight hadn’t lasted—as soon as Anatole returned after his first time outside, they locked eyes and forgave one another without speaking.

“Be careful,” she said.

He assured her he would. Navigated the stairs. And found himself in this carriage, carrying him across Moscow, where Levin expected him at seven. He wouldn’t have minded Hélène’s company, in some ways. The carriage seemed too quiet, his own thoughts amplified. But he had to do this himself. That was the point.

Soon, the carriage stopped, and the driver came round to open the door. Anatole regarded the arm the driver extended toward him with narrowed eyes.

“You can keep that,” he said irritably. “Seeing as I’m not an invalid old woman.”

“Apologies, monsieur,” the driver said. “I thought—”

Anatole looked down, at the steep carriage steps, the brush of ice along the cobblestones below. He closed his eyes and sighed. Pride goeth before the fall, he thought, and he’d fallen long ago.

“Oh, all right,” he said, and took the driver’s arm, carefully lowering himself to the street.

He paid the man, then turned toward the townhouse on the corner, its windows golden through the night. Behind him, he heard the jingle of reins, then the rumble of the carriage, disappearing into the dark. Alone, entirely. Anatole steeled himself, then made his way through the gate.

It was a respectable house, neither ostentatious nor inexpensive. Dark brick, two stories, with a brass nameplate reading “Konstantin Vladimirovich Levin, Physician” beside the door. Anatole remembered it well. Though the last time he’d been here, the three steps to the door hadn’t seemed so difficult. And he hadn’t been so afraid of knocking.

Was this a mistake? It must have been a mistake. Levin had been polite to offer, but it was madness to think he’d _meant_ it. Anatole was a fool, for believing that—

No. Levin said he would. The doctor suggested it himself.

Live in the real world, Anatole told himself sharply. You know what he said.

He knocked on the door, and waited.

In a moment, a maidservant opened the door. She stared, mouth slightly open, as if she’d never seen a man before. Apparently most of Doctor Levin’s patients did not look like Anatole. She was pretty, he thought vaguely. Fine dark hair, green eyes, and that look of entranced innocence he always found curiously attractive, for reasons he wasn’t interested in exploring. Her dress left far too much to the imagination, but there was no help for that. He recognized the thought as an unhealthy distraction, but let it run its course. If his options were seducing a maid or bolting into the night, he’d take the former.

“Are you here to see Doctor Levin, monsieur?” she asked. It seemed she’d poured all her modesty into her dress, and left none for the bold way she now eyed Anatole in the door.

Anatole stood straighter and gave the young woman his old smile. A suggestion of things yet unimagined. A sign he’d been watching her, and liked what he saw. From the way she blushed, it seemed to be working.

“Yes, darling, thank you,” he said. “Although I’m equally happy to see _you_.”

The maid blushed harder. “I’ll see if the doctor has an opening,” she said.

“No need, Masha,” Levin said, coming up behind her. “Monsieur is my seven o’clock.”

He looked more relaxed than Anatole had ever seen him. Here, in a warm yellow waistcoat and house shoes, he looked like he were preparing to sit down with a brandy and the newspapers. Levin glanced briefly between Anatole and the maid, still blushing like a Christmas lantern, then gave a long sigh. _Honestly,_ said the sigh. _Can’t you go three minutes?_

“Masha, you can take Monsieur’s coat. Then we’ll be in my office.”

Masha dipped a curtsey as Anatole stepped inside, letting the warmth of the foyer spill into his bones. She extended a hand. After a moment, Anatole handed her his coat. Though it still fit him poorly, it had served to hide the worst of it. He saw her stare, at the space between his thighs, how his waistcoat gapped over his sunken chest. A different sort of stare this time. Now he was the one whose face burned.

“Through here,” Levin said. He gestured down the hall, guiding Anatole through the open door.

A handsome room, Anatole thought. Spacious and warm, with green velvet drapes over the windows. A heavy desk sagged with papers along the far wall. Two small sofas were set facing one another, near a roaring fire. Levin closed the door, then looked at Anatole, still standing in the center of the room. The doctor opened his arms invitingly.

“Make yourself at home,” he said. “Sit where you like.”

Anatole paused. It seemed like a test, somehow, though he couldn’t fathom the stakes. He sat at last near the fire, at the end of the sofa. He set the cane at his feet, watching as reflected tongues of flame danced across the wood. Almost without thinking, he began to pick at the skin around his right thumbnail, searching for loose ends. Levin sat opposite him, watching. Without speaking, Anatole bit his lip, then tucked his hands under his thighs.

“I’m glad you came,” Levin said. “I wasn’t certain you would.”

“I wasn’t either.”

Levin leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “I want you to know,” he said, “that everything we say tonight remains between us. You can tell me anything you like. I want you to feel comfortable here.”

Anatole nodded. _I want you to feel comfortable._ That was a laugh. He couldn’t even feel comfortable on the sofa. He shifted, crossed one leg over the other, then switched them. It was no good. He still felt on display. He chanced a look at Levin, but the man’s expression showed no hint of impatience.

“Do you mind if I—” Anatole began, then gestured obscurely at his boots.

“By all means,” Levin said. “As I said. Be comfortable.”

Anatole slid out of his boots without untying them, then pulled his knees up to his chest. He wrapped his arms around his shins, hugging his elbows. The soft upholstery of the sofa felt curiously pleasant against his feet, through his socks. It was a silly thing, but having something in front of him, even his own legs, made him feel less exposed. Safer.

“Better?”

Anatole nodded. “Thank you.”

The fire crackled in the grate beside them. The pop of the logs sounded like gunfire.

“I don’t know what to say,” Anatole said, looking at his knees.

“That’s all right,” Levin said. “There’s no wrong thing to say. How you’ve been feeling. What you’re thinking right now, even.”

Right now. Christ. Anatole swallowed, then ran one hand over his mouth. He thought for a moment he might be sick. Levin watched him patiently.

“I was thinking,” Anatole said at last, “about how much you frighten me.”

Levin didn’t flinch. It was like Anatole had confessed he’d been thinking about the weather. “I certainly don’t mean to be frightening,” he said. “Why do you think I am?”

“I keep waiting for the act to stop,” Anatole said. “For when you decide you’re done being kind to me.”

Levin’s hands clenched slightly. It wasn’t anger. Logically, Anatole knew that. Or if it was anger, it wasn’t directed at _him_. But the logical part of his brain was no longer at the forefront. He hadn’t meant to confess that. Shouldn’t have. Too risky, if he was right.

“You think I would hurt you,” Levin said.

Anatole closed his eyes. “I know you wouldn’t,” he said. “But I can’t help thinking you might. After—”

His voice broke, and he fell silent. Against his closed eyes, the fire seemed to grow louder. Any moment, he thought, it would leap over the grate, catch the walls of books, the curtains. Any moment, the house itself would burn, spitting smoke into the night.

“We don’t have to start there,” Levin said after a long moment. “We can talk about anything you like. Work our way toward that.”

Anatole kept his eyes closed. He could feel it, then. Smoke from the burning house. Smoke from the cannons. He let out a breath, then shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I’d rather talk about it.”

“All right,” Levin said. “Try opening your eyes if you can. Stay with me.”

Anatole bit his lip, steadying himself. He was safe. He was in Moscow. This man had no reason to hurt him. None at all.

“I’m with you,” he said, and he opened his eyes, and began to speak.

 

* * *

 

No one had ever prepared Anatole for war. Even Fedya, who’d gone to the front first, never liked to talk about it, leaving Anatole to form his own conclusions. Granted, he’d learned the mechanics through other channels. He was a fine shot, thanks to his fair share of early-morning duels. He could hold his own man-to-man, thanks to nights in the less-reputable taverns along the Neva, in which drinking always led to arguing, and the man left standing was the winner.

But still. That was _fighting._ That wasn’t war.

No one had told him what happened to time, during war.

At Borodino, time moved both too fast and too slow. Every minute a blink, every blink a lifetime. You could fear for your life in brief flashes. You couldn’t do it sunrise to sundown, panicked by the blast of shells and the whine of bullets, the smoke choking off your breath. Anatole stepped out of his body, during the battle. The man doing the fighting, that wasn’t him. If that man died, well, soldiers died all the time. No great loss.

Then the bayonet caught him across his back, tearing him hip to shoulder.

He screamed, almost inaudible above the roar of the fighting. The pain was impossible. His back felt like he’d been thrown in a lake, soaked through and colder by the second. The ground hit him hard as he fell. Half-frozen mud against his cheek. As he lay there, losing consciousness, pouring blood against the earth, he didn’t think anything profound. Nothing transcendent. All he thought was how strange the dead man lying next to him looked, caught in the jaw by a saber, with half his face missing like that.

When he woke, who knew how long after, the smoke hovered, and the silence was chilling. A ceasefire, for the evening. Or the battle was over. He couldn’t say. The first thing he noted was the quiet. The second was the pain. Like someone laid a white-hot brand along his back, searing him hip to shoulder. He cried out, unable to stop himself. The sound was short and sharp, muffled by the earth.

For the next six months, Anatole would think back to that sound, and how everything would have been different if he’d managed to swallow it.

He heard a low murmur of voices, and then three men stood over him, attracted by the noise. Anatole didn’t know what side they fought for. He didn’t care. Either way, maybe they would kill him. Make this stop. It would be the practical thing. He was no good to anyone, lying here bleeding on the battlefield.

“Pathetic,” one of the men said—his voice smooth, speaking French, that answered that question. “We train these provincial boys for how long, and they still don’t know to _stab_.”

“One jab under the ribs and it’s over,” said the second, kicking Anatole in the side to demonstrate. “None of this, dragging it out. Unprofessional.”

“You might finish it,” said the first. “Would be neater.”

Yes, Anatole thought. His hands curled into the ground, hard mud and dead grass. Yes, finish it, please, I’m done, it’s enough—

“Let’s see,” said the third man.

He caught Anatole with his boot, rolling him onto his back. Anatole screamed again. The force of his own weight against the open wound. Mud and filth seeping in, through the ruins of his uniform. The world tilted, faded, brilliant sparks before his closed eyes. He would have lost consciousness, had the man not taken a fistful of Anatole’s hair and dragged his head up, to examine him better.

“Not this one,” the man said, and laughed. “Look at him. He’ll be worth something.”

Anatole felt his head drop back. It hit the ground hard. He whimpered, keeping his eyes screwed shut. He didn’t want to see. If he couldn’t see them, it wouldn’t be happening.

“It’s a waste,” said the first, disapproving. “He’ll be dead in two days.”

Two days. A man couldn’t live two hours, in pain like this. He was already fading. Struggling to make out words.

“Let me worry about that,” said the third, as the world dimmed.

When Anatole came to, he’d been moved. Inside. Dull canvas walls, a tarp across the floor. He was sitting up, he realized. On his knees. That didn’t make sense. What kind of person fell asleep on their—

Then he felt the tent pole against his back. The tight ropes binding his wrists and ankles behind it. The pain in his back was wild. Inhuman. He tried to gasp. Air seemed hard to come by. As if something were wrong with his lungs. His mouth was dry and tasted grainy, like salt.

He was left there alone for hours, until the morning sunlight beneath the tent flap turned to evening dusk, then night.

At last, a man entered the tent. A tall man, broad-shouldered, maybe forty. Wearing the uniform of a French captain. He was filthy, smeared with smoke and dirt and blood, the way Anatole must have been too. But when the captain smiled, his teeth were perfectly clean. Wolf-white.

He sat on the floor in front of Anatole. “You lost,” he said simply.

Anatole merely looked at him. That seemed obvious on the face of things.

“Your Russian army,” the captain said, to clarify. “Beaten into the ground. Forty thousand dead. Though I’ll grant you, you took some of our best with you.”

“What do you want?” Anatole said, in French.

The captain smiled. “Aristocrat,” he said, to no one in particular. “I can always tell. Good accent.”

“Kill me, if you’re going to,” Anatole said.

“What’s your name?”

Anatole said nothing. To hell with cooperating. He knew he would die here. Everyone he cared about was dead already, if Russia had lost. Fedya would be dead. The French would advance on Moscow, and Hélène would be next. Then Petersburg, and everyone else. Anatole had feared death before the battle. It no longer seemed to matter. No one wanted to be the last man standing.

The captain took a fistful of Anatole’s shirt and shoved him back against the pole. Through Anatole’s tattered uniform, the rough wood spiked into his wounded back. Splinters sunk through the gash into flesh, muscle. He cried out, a pathetic wail. His vision blurred. He thought he might split in two, pulled into pieces along the rift from the bayonet.

“Kuragin. My name. Please, don’t, _God—_ ”

The captain released him. Anatole slumped down, panting. Sweat had begun to bead along his forehead.

“Kuragin,” the captain repeated. “Surely there’s more. You’re Russian.”

He reached forward again.

“Anatole,” he gasped. If he’d had fourteen names, he’d have given them all. “Anatole Vasilyevich Kuragin. From Petersburg. Please, don’t hurt me, please.”

The captain brought his hand back with a smile. “There we are,” he said. “You see how easy this is when you do as you’re told?”

Time was difficult to follow. Pain knocked Anatole’s mind loose. The captain questioned him for plans, tactics, strongholds, anything that might serve the French. The fact that Anatole was only a junior corporal didn’t matter. As if he was withholding information out of patriotism, not ignorance. After one vague answer too many, the captain drew his knife. Anatole froze. Wide-eyed.

“How many men did Kutuzov leave to guard Moscow?” the captain asked calmly.

Anatole shook his head, so fast his brain rattled. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the knife. “I don’t know. Please. I’ve never even seen Kutuzov.”

The captain sighed, then took Anatole by the jaw with one hand, as if prying something from between the teeth of a dog. With the other hand, he pressed the point of the knife to the corner of Anatole’s left eye. “You’re being difficult,” he said.

“I don’t—”

The knife broke the skin, slicing a slow path down Anatole’s cheek.

Anatole was rambling now, hysterical, frantic, sobbing, pathetic, his voice an octave too high. Nothing stopped the knife.

“Please, God, if I knew I’d tell you, I would, I’m no one, I don’t know please stop don’t Christ I don’t _know—_ ”

At last, the captain seemed to believe him. Certainly Anatole hadn’t given the impression he’d hold anything back, if speaking would make it stop. The captain wiped the blade against Anatole’s shirt, then tucked it into his belt. Anatole trembled, nerves snapped. He didn’t know if the damp on his cheek meant he was bleeding or crying.

“You really are useless, Anatole Vasilyevich,” he said. “It’s a good thing I like you.”

He reached into his coat and pulled out a flask, dented by a bullet. The captain unscrewed the top, then put the mouth of it to Anatole’s lips. Water. The taste was beautiful, sacred, almost erotic. He drank desperately, awkward without his hands. The captain gave him several long swallows before pulling the flask away. Anatole licked his lips, scrounging for the last drop. His tongue came back bitter with blood. He hadn’t had a drink in two days.

Maybe there was kindness in this man yet. Maybe it wasn’t all lost. He could try, at least. To cooperate. Maybe it would be easier, then.

“Thank you,” he said.

The captain smiled and traced one hand carelessly across Anatole’s knee. Anatole froze. The hand didn’t. It kept moving, up his thigh and in, fingers like spiders. He couldn’t pull away. When the captain kissed him, he was too surprised to do anything but sit there and take it. His head hummed too loud to fight.

“You’re very welcome,” the captain said. He braced himself on Anatole’s shoulder, pushing himself to his feet and turning to go. “I’m sure we can think of a use for you.”

Anatole would not see the captain again for days. After the French decamped, when two more soldiers dragged him from the tent and marched him forward with two dozen other prisoners, fenced in by cavalry officers. After he stumbled in the cannon-rutted road and fell to his knees, legs trembling, ready to die, but a French colonel dragged him to his feet by the collar and forced him on. After they reached the fort some seventy miles from Moscow, where Anatole was thrown into a cell, hands chained above him, left there in the dark.

Not until the door opened, and two soldiers entered, the captain and a private, and the captain knelt down and said _open your eyes, and look at me._

 

* * *

 

In Levin’s office, the fire had burned down almost to nothing. Anatole looked at the carpet between them. The swing of the pendulum from the grandfather clock sounded impossibly loud. Anatole clenched his fists, then looked over his shoulder. The clock read seven-fifty. He’d talked for almost an hour. He felt as if someone had scooped a hand through his ribcage and torn everything out, leaving the hollow shell behind.

“It happened again,” he said quietly. “After that.”

“What did?” Levin said. He was better at this than Anatole expected. He didn’t look shaken. He didn’t seem surprised. He wasn’t even staring. “The interrogation, or the rape?”

“Both,” Anatole said. He pressed his forehead to his knees, fighting hard not to cry. “But I don’t want to talk about the rest tonight.”

“Of course. How do you feel, now?”

Anatole turned his head and rested his cheek on his knees. “Tired,” he said. “But...but, it helps that you know. I’m tired of being the only one.”

Levin nodded. “I’m proud of you. I know that wasn’t easy.”

Anatole laughed quietly. “No,” he said.

“We have a few minutes before my eight o’clock,” Levin said, glancing over Anatole’s shoulder for the time. “It’s up to you, how you’d like to use them. You’ve done a lot for one day.”

Methodically, Anatole unfolded his legs and sat straight, feet on the floor. It felt awful. But he had to prove to himself he could do it. Especially given what he wanted to ask next.

“I want you to tell me how to stop it,” he said.

“Stop what?”

“The…I don’t know,” Anatole said, annoyance creeping in. He didn’t know how to talk about this, he didn’t have the _vocabulary._ “When my head stops working and I can’t breathe and I feel like I’m going to die. That.”

“Panic attacks.”

“Yes. Fine. What do I do when that happens?”

Anatole realized he’d started picking at his thumbnail again. A drop of blood spilled through the ridge around the nail. He swore and clenched his fist, tucking the thumb inside. Levin, graciously, pretended not to notice.

“There are a few things you could try,” Levin said. “Breathing. Mental tricks. I can talk you through one tonight. If you’d like to come back, say, once a week, we could go over other things. It’s your decision, of course.”

Anatole nodded. This had been awful. Talking about it. Reliving it. But, in a way he couldn’t begin to understand, it helped. He needed this, more than he’d realized. There was too much he couldn’t work through on his own. Silencing the panic. Banishing the fear of open doors, darkened corners, strange voices and sudden noises. Getting rid of the terror that thrilled him still, sometimes, around Fedya. And if he came back, he’d never have to start from the beginning again.

“All right,” he said.

 

* * *

 

Levin watched as Anatole took his coat from Masha and left the house, carefully making his way down the stairs. He hailed a passing hackney-carriage on its way to the Bolshoi and climbed into the back. In a minute, he was out of sight. Levin looked out the window a minute more, before stepping away. He shook his head briskly, in reprimand. He had other patients. Work to do.

His eight o’clock, a middle-aged countess with a nagging cough, passed in a haze. At last, when the countess left at nine, Levin sank down on the sofa and took his head in his hands.

“Do you need anything else this evening, monsieur?” Masha said, leaning in through the door.

“No, thank you,” Levin said, his head still in his hands.

“If you’re certain,” she said. “Good night, monsieur.”

He looked up at the empty sofa, where until recently Anatole Kuragin had sat. Despite the softness of his voice, Anatole’s words had been clear. Vivid. As if he’d rehearsed the story a hundred times on his own, spinning images into more-than-life. The smoke of the battlefield. The freezing dark of the cell. The flame of the blade against his cheek. The predatory feel of a man’s lips.

“Wait,” he said.

Masha turned back, waiting.

“Bring me a bottle of vodka, Masha, if you would. And a glass.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the shorter chapter, but it's setting up a few longer ones...

Fedya woke happier than he’d been in months. The sunlight pouring through the window suggested it was at least nine in the morning, possibly after. He smiled into the pillow, feeling the warmth of Anatole’s back pressing against his chest. This, he was sure, was what heaven felt like. For eight months, he’d wanted nothing but to wake up with Anatole in his arms like this, listening to the soft wave of his breath. Why give it up so soon?

But the world, he knew, wouldn’t wait.

Fedya stretched, then let out a soft groan as he released it. “Tolya.”

The sound Anatole made wasn’t a word by any stretch of the imagination.

“We should get up, Tolya.”

“Time ‘s it?” Anatole mumbled. Fedya’s flat was still freezing, and Anatole had burrowed deep into the blankets until he was almost indistinguishable from the quilt. Only the silver of his hair, and the tip of his nose, and his eyes, stubbornly tight shut.

Fedya rolled over to grasp at his pocket-watch dangling from the bedpost, steadily ticking an inch out of reach. He lunged to grab it, dragging it by its tail back into the bed. Checking the time, he winced.

“Late,” he said.

“How late?”

“Eleven-thirty.”

“Fuck,” Anatole said, and buried his head beneath the pillow. “We have _hours_.”

Fedya laughed and set the watch aside. He and Anatole had only resumed sharing a bed four nights ago. Anatole had come home late that night, after his third meeting with Doctor Levin. He looked the way he always did after those meetings: wiped, drained, almost transparent with worry. It was barely an improvement on the first time, when Anatole had come home with eyes bright from crying and gone immediately to bed without speaking a word. It made Fedya wonder if these sessions were only making things worse. But later that night, as Fedya started to move with his old fur coat to sleep on the floor, Anatole had said, so quietly Fedya almost couldn’t hear, “You don’t have to do that, Fedya.”

Fedya had stared at him. “What do you mean?”

Anatole had glanced down, a faint flush rising to his hair. “I mean, you can sleep here with me. If you like. You don’t have to.”

If he liked? That night, Fedya didn’t sleep for a minute. Just lay there with Anatole lying in the curve of his side, feeling the heat of Anatole’s body like the glow of sunlight, savoring every heartbeat. The next morning, he’d written a note to Doctor Levin, and sent it over at once with Mitya. _You’re an angel, Monsieur, a saint. Thank you. I’m in your debt until my last breath. God bless you. Thank you._

The next morning, Hélène had packed up her things and moved back in with Pierre. Lending Fedya and Anatole a semblance of normalcy, he thought. A private life, like any two people could have. It was kind of her, if that was why. In any case, that explanation was more believable than the one she gave—“I don’t want to hear my little brother having sex, Fedya, it’s vulgar”—a sentence Fedya had been unable to stop laughing at for a full minute.

It had only been four days, and Fedya and Anatole still hadn’t made love. Their sleeping together truly was just that. Still, lying here beside him felt as intimate as anything else they’d ever done. Anatole was trying, trying harder than Fedya had ever seen him try at anything. And Fedya had already gotten more than he’d dreamed of. It was no imposition at all, to let Anatole set the pace.

Fedya kissed Anatole’s shoulder, wheedling now. “You have to get up eventually.”

“If I don’t get up,” came the muffled response from beneath the pillow, “I don’t have to go.”

Fedya shook his head, though of course Anatole couldn’t see. “Afterward, you’ll be glad you went.”

“Afterward, I’ll be _dead_ , Fedya. This will kill me.”

Rolling his eyes, Fedya snatched the pillow away from Anatole and tossed it on the floor. Anatole made a sound like a kicked cat and sat up, scowling. Fedya laughed. It was good to see him like this. Indignant. Stubborn. Melodramatic. Familiar.

“You won’t die,” Fedya said. He disentangled himself from the blankets and moved to dress, leaving Anatole to glare after him. “You’ve done this before.”

Fedya was lying, of course. Anatole hadn’t done this before. Society events, of course. Balls, dinners, concerts, operas. If it involved seeing and being seen, Anatole had done it, and with enthusiasm.

But that was then. This was different.

Most of Moscow still had no idea that the reports of Anatole’s death had been false. And as Anatole regained his strength and started leaving Fedya’s flat with ever-greater frequency, it was becoming increasingly urgent for him to present himself formally in society again. They’d discussed this, the three of them, at length, though Anatole always feigned deafness when it came up. He’d need to put in an appearance at the right sort of event: small enough to feel manageable, but large enough so that everyone who mattered would know at the same time.

It fell to Hélène, in the end, to take care of it. She’d arrived at Fedya’s flat the week before and announced that she’d be hosting a soiree at her home. Nothing elaborate, she said, when all the color drained from Anatole’s face. An intimate gathering. Only some thirty or forty people. An evening of music, drinks, mingling, dancing for those who felt moved to.

She’d also, she added, invited a few guests from outside Moscow.

Ippolyt, their older brother, home at last from Paris.

And Prince Vasily Kuragin, who would be taking the seven o’clock train from Petersburg, and who might very well be arriving in the city any minute.

Anatole let out a tiny wail like an injured bird at this news.

Hélène was right, of course. They couldn’t continue to hide from Vasily forever. He at least had a right to know his son was alive. But that didn’t mean Fedya had to welcome his presence. One step out of line, and Fedya would punch Vasily Kuragin square in the face, and to hell with the consequences. He’d told Anatole and Hélène as much. Neither of them had tried to talk him out of it.

“Come on,” Fedya said, and pulled open a drawer to the bureau. “You’d better get ready.”

“I’ll go like this,” Anatole said.

Fedya glanced at him, half-dressed in an undershirt and loose trousers, hair a disaster, the creases of the pillow worn into his cheek until they were nearly indistinguishable from his scar. It wasn’t fair, how beautiful he looked. Like a shipwrecked god, washed up on a beach. He couldn’t have realized the effect he had on people, that way.

But no, Fedya remembered. Anatole knew his effects perfectly well.

“Quite the re-entry,” Fedya said, and tossed the first shirt he could find at Anatole. “You’d have their attention then.”

Anatole caught the shirt with one hand, held it up experimentally, then frowned. “Not this one, Fedya, Christ. Don’t you know anything about fashion?”

Fedya laughed. “No,” he said. “Get up and show me.”

Anatole groaned, then dragged himself from bed. He’d reclaimed some of his grace again, fluid and easy. No need for the cane—Fedya had given that back to the widow downstairs a week ago. But Anatole still lacked his old confidence, moving as if he were still unsure in his own bones. The fact that he’d slept in clothes at all was an indication something wasn’t right. Many people in Moscow would prefer Anatole like this. It gave him the humility he’d always lacked, an air of deference. But Fedya ached for the day when Anatole would climb out of bed as he used to, with that self-important, self-possessed swagger. The one that scandalized churchgoers and old women, but that would mean Anatole moved like _himself_ again.

Anatole laughed again, now. Teased Fedya again. Kissed him sometimes, though briefly, a glancing sort of kiss Fedya could tell still had the undertones of a dare, _can you do it?_ He slept beside Fedya, breathing steady. Troubled by no more than one dream a night, and sometimes not even that.

They’d come so far. God willing, one evening with Vasily Kuragin wouldn’t undo all of it.

Anatole rifled through the bureau, searching for clothing that fell in the neighborhood of suitable. Everything he owned was a year out of fashion by now, but the notion of a tailor evaluating his body with cold fingers and a tape measure struck both of them as something to save for another day. Most likely, Moscow would be too busy coping with the fact that Anatole was alive to worry about the cut of his trousers.

He hummed softly and pulled out a shirt—one that, to Fedya’s untrained eye, looked exactly like the rejected one now sitting on the bed. Fedya felt something curious beneath his ribs at the sight of Anatole biting his lower lip in concentration, a faint frown furrowing his brow. They had a simple problem, finally. Deciding what to wear to a party they didn’t want to attend. A problem from another life.

“Tolya,” he said, and laid a hand on Anatole’s shoulder.

He turned, smiling at the look on Fedya’s face. “Mm?”

“I love you,” Fedya said.

Anatole twined his arms around Fedya’s hips, encouraging him closer. His body warm against Fedya’s, his heartbeat steady.

“I love you too.”

“And I’m proud of you,” Fedya said.

Anatole said nothing. Only kissed him like a beam of starlight, there and gone in a moment, but dazzling while it lasted.

 

* * *

 

Fedya glanced across the carriage that evening, trying to catch Anatole’s eye. It was no good. Anatole had leaned his head against the window, and watched the streets pass in silence. The gaslamps carved new hollows into his face, making him look almost ghostly. Fedya bit his lip, then reached over and squeezed Anatole’s hand.

Anatole flinched, then turned toward Fedya. If there was sadness in his eyes, it didn’t last. He smiled, looking at Fedya with an air of approval.

“You look good,” he said.

“Not as good as you,” Fedya said, which was true.

Even poorly lit by moonlight and gaslight, Anatole looked transcendent. Beneath his overcoat, his clothes were more subdued than usual: a black waistcoat and white shirt. On anyone else (say, Fedya), it would have looked like a waiter’s uniform. On Anatole, it looked like what it was—unstudied elegance, every inch the prince. His hair shone like snow, like silver. He was still too thin, though not enough to startle strangers. But Fedya had seen, as Anatole dressed, the way his trousers skimmed over his hipbones, barely staying up. Anatole had closed his eyes and cursed under his breath. Wordlessly, Fedya laid a hand on his shoulder and passed him a belt.

Even so. He looked like himself. That was more than enough.

Fedya, he knew, looked laughably inelegant in comparison. He wore his uniform, which he’d donned after quietly asking Anatole if he’d prefer something else. Anatole had looked at him sideways, then let out a sigh and shrugged. “No,” he said, “wear it. People expect it, and it suits you. But God, after this is over, I’m taking you to be fitted for _human_ clothes.” And Fedya laughed, and kissed him, and pulled on the jacket of his uniform for the first time in two months. Curious, how at home he felt in Russian infantry green.

But now the war was over, and he’d need somewhere else to feel at home, soon.

The carriage pulled to a stop in front of Hélène’s house, where a small tangle of carriages already released knots of Moscow society in twos and threes. Fedya and Anatole didn’t move to get out. Anatole watched them through the window, those well-dressed ladies in shawls and lace with hems sweeping the street, those gentlemen in their bright waistcoats like birds in a menagerie. Healthy, happy, rich, careless, content. As if, months ago, this city hadn’t been burning. As if there had never been a war.

Fedya knew what ran through Anatole’s mind in this moment. He’d had the same thoughts himself, that night on leave when Hélène brought him to the opera. He’d only just returned from the front, and she’d swept him into a nest of diamonds and pearls and artifice. Another world, blissfully ignorant of the other. Didn’t they know, these people, lifting their champagne and gossiping between themselves, didn’t they know there had been a war? That a hundred miles west of here, the countryside was plowed like a farmer’s field, and in every rut lay a hundred Russian men, sightless and breathless and dead, shallowly buried and waiting only for a heavy rain to wash their corpses bare again? Didn’t they know, these jewelled society birds, that Fedya had driven his bayonet through the guts of a teenage boy in a French uniform who wept as he died? Didn’t they know how long Anatole had spent away from the sun, past the point of screaming?

Didn’t they know what men like Fedya and Anatole had lost, so that these people could live?

They didn’t, of course. And it was Fedya and Anatole’s job to smile, and accept vague thanks for their unspecified service, and never speak a word about any of that. Inappropriate for society. Barbaric. Sentimental. Upsetting.

Anatole’s mouth narrowed to a thin line. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, releasing it with a tiny wince. His hands had clenched on the edge of the carriage seat. It would take a crowbar to pry them loose.

Fedya nudged Anatole’s thigh with his knee. “We don’t have to go,” he said. “We can go back home. Lena will understand.”

Anatole shook his head. “It’s fine,” he said. “Just…”

“Just what?”

He opened his eyes. Wide, innocent, afraid. “Don’t leave me alone with them.”

“Not for a minute,” Fedya said.

Anatole opened the carriage door, and they walked up the path and into the house, into the swirl of color and champagne and music.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback is my faaave.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey friends, it's time for me to start writing my favorite genre again: attractive rich people being petty lil shits to each other at formal social gatherings. (Some kids wanted to be doctors or firemen. I wanted to write cutting dialogue for an expensive BBC costume drama.)

Entering the house felt like walking into a dream. They were straight out of Anatole’s memory, these high ceilings. The crystal chandeliers. The crush of people—the same people—gossiping and laughing, as if nothing in life mattered at all. He’d lived here, once, for a time. The house had gone on living without him. The whole world had gone on, and he’d spiraled out, down a road no one else had followed. He felt like a trespasser. If Fedya hadn’t been standing at his elbow, he’d have run.

They followed the hall to the door of the ballroom, where a servant bowed to both of them. “And how may I present you, gentlemen?”

Anatole felt the color drain from his face. Oh Jesus. He should have thought this through. Why hadn’t he thought this through? He hadn’t considered this. Being announced. Presented. To a room full of people. Who would all turn. Stop what they were doing. And stare. At him. Their eyes on him. All their eyes on him. He couldn’t do this. Why had he thought he could?

He bit his lip and focused on his breath. Levin had walked him through this in their first evening session. Deep, level, slow breaths. Open his throat and pull air from deep behind his lungs, until the sound rasped like the ocean in his head. It wasn’t enough to stop the panic, not every time. But it gave him something to fixate on, and he needed that desperately.

Fedya, sensing Anatole’s mood from the expansion of his breath, took over. “That really isn’t necessary. We’re friends of the hostess.”

The servant paused. “It is customary, monsieur,” he said.

Anatole couldn’t speak. He couldn’t. His name choked in his throat. The panic was bubbling up, despite his best efforts to swallow it. Fedya glanced over at him, silently asking permission. Mutely, Anatole nodded. Do it. Get it done. It had to be done. But he couldn’t do it.

“Captain Fyodor Ivanovich Dolokhov,” Fedya said, taking Anatole’s hand. “And Prince Anatole Vasilyevich Kuragin.”

The servant must have been new, Anatole thought. Borrowed for the evening from another Moscow family. Otherwise he wouldn’t be staring at Anatole with his mouth open, like a carp in a fishmonger’s window.

“What?” Anatole snapped—anxiety venting out in annoyance. “Haven’t you ever announced a dead man before?”

The servant blushed as Fedya failed to stifle a laugh. He stepped aside, opening their path into the room. Without saying a word, Fedya tightened his grip on Anatole’s hand. It didn’t matter, Anatole told himself fiercely. It was just a ballroom. Full of empty-headed idiots. What did it matter to him what they thought? What did he care?

He was lying. He cared what they thought. Desperately. He always had.

“I’m right here,” Fedya said.

Anatole nodded. They stepped into the ballroom as the servant’s voice called out their names from the door.

The silence was instantaneous.

Every pair of eyes in the room whirled to stare at them. Women whispering to another. Men craning their necks to get a better look. Anatole heard a gasp cut through the silence like a bullet. His face burned. His hand, in Fedya’s, was trembling. He’d never felt so small.

Something in him shivered, then cut itself loose. He felt himself detach from the situation, as effortlessly as stepping out of a pair of shoes. He watched his own body from somewhere high up, near the chandelier. The view was painful. A bone-thin man of twenty-four, dressed in last year’s clothes, pale and anxious, standing in full view in the doorway. Unable to move. Frozen by the stares of people he hadn’t seen in years, and who had already sent their generic condolences to his father, assuming him dead.

Anatole knew he’d have lived for this a year ago. Freezing a room with a step through a door. He’d done it on purpose, more than once. Timed his entrances to interrupt something—arrive in the middle of dinner, or ten minutes after curtain—so the sound of his step would attract attention. The eyes that turned to him then had looked with fascination, or envy, or desire. He’d been someone, in their eyes, then. Someone to know. Someone to want.

Now, the eyes were cold with shock. Pity. Morbid curiosity. They looked at him like an object, a disaster, a freak snowstorm in August.

It was awful. Their eyes felt like hands against his skin.

“Come on,” Fedya said, at his side. Gently, he led Anatole into the crowd, where Hélène abruptly ended a tense-looking conversation with Pierre and rushed forward to rescue them. At the first sign of her smile, Anatole felt the world begin to settle. He tried not to think about Pierre, his broad hands and the rage in his eyes.

“Toto,” Hélène said, and kissed him—a little too intimately for the setting, but they were both nervous, which lowered their inhibitions. Anatole had always been more publicly affectionate with Hélène when his anxiety was high. Her presence was comforting, solid ground underneath him, love he could rely on. And it wasn’t as if he could get away with showing Fedya much affection, around other people. “You look like…you look like _you_ ,” she said finally.

“I’ll take it as a compliment,” he said.

“I meant it as one. Out of curiosity,” she said, with the hint of a smile, “how long does it take to get your hair to do that?”

“Five minutes?” Anatole said.

“Thirty-five,” Fedya said, like a traitor.

Hélène laughed and kissed Fedya too, before turning back to Anatole. “How do you feel?” she asked.

“How do you think?” he said tersely. “They’re all staring at me.”

“No, they aren’t.” She glanced back. They were. She winced. “Give them time. You’ve done the hardest part.”

He hadn’t. Not remotely. Their eyes, from a distance, were one thing. But Anatole had spent his whole life in society. He’d charmed his way through his first ball at age five, though he’d fallen asleep during the pas de deux and his mother had carried him upstairs to bed. He knew these people. And he knew society never stopped at looking. He’d have to put on a show, all night, for all of them. No room in their eyes for a man like him, one with secrets, with fears, with nightmares.

No room in his father’s eyes for that either.

“Is he here?” he asked.

Hélène shook her head, not asking who he meant. “Not yet. I’ve put you across from him at dinner, between me and Fedya.”

That was something. Reinforcements on both sides. But that still didn’t mean Anatole looked forward to it.

Gradually, conversations repopulated the room, cutting through the agonizing hush. The faint sound of a violin, an oboe, from the small orchestra Hélène had brought on for the evening. Anatole lingered near his sister, counting on her to run interference for the small crowd of people still gawking at him from all corners of the room. No one had dared approach him yet, though Anatole was sure it wouldn’t take long for Moscow’s boldest to make the move. He tapped the side of his hand against his leg, out of time with the orchestra. It wasn’t his decision; the hand refused to stay still. Fedya and Hélène were talking, about nothing, just filling the silence. It was enough, to hear their voices, to know they were beside him. That he wasn’t doing this alone.

“Prince Anatole,” said a woman’s voice from behind him. “What an unexpected delight to see you here.”

He turned, and found himself face-to-face with the elaborate chignon and brilliant smile of Anna Pavlovna. Of course. She’d sniff out gossip the way a wolf sniffed out blood. The moment the servant said his name, she’d been working her way toward him, determined to spot the scandal behind his disappearance. A wonder she’d restrained herself for five whole minutes.

“Princess,” Anatole said. She extended her hand, and he bowed to kiss it, straightening up again with a smile. Every one of his movements was artificial, but she didn’t seem to mind. Artificiality was practically _de rigeur_. The less he meant it, the more sophisticated he looked.

“I didn’t think to see you alive again,” Anna said, around her broad smile.

Anatole shrugged. “You know I like an entrance, eh?” he said.

She laughed, as if he’d said something much clever than he had. “I mourned you, you know. Weeks and weeks.”

“You flatter me,” he said drily, not believing her.

“How _did_ word get back that you’d—”

“False reports.” He shrugged and raked a hand back through his hair in a studied kind of artlessness, one he knew worked well on people like this. “Rumor can’t be trusted.”

Anna Pavlovna was a master of polite social behavior. If she heard the unspoken dig following Anatole’s words— _and neither can you, you shameless gossip_ —she knew how to hide it. “Naturally,” she said. “You must have been relieved, Countess, to hear the truth.”

“Of course,” Hélène said sweetly. “You know how intimate my brother and I have always been.”

No amount of social grace could keep Anna from blushing at that. Anatole coughed, clearing a laugh from his throat. Unsettling these unflappable Moscow ladies was like rediscovering an old pleasure. Particularly Anna Pavlovna, who thought Anatole didn’t know she’d been regaling her salons with scandalous tales of the Kuragin siblings for years. Brilliant smiles to his face, _did you hear about them, what Anna Mikhailovna told me she’d heard, truly shocking_ behind his back. Goading her was the least she deserved.

“Where have you been, then?” Anna said, trying to regain control of the conversation. “I haven’t seen you about since the armistice. Though I’m relieved to see you looking so well.”

What happened to you, she meant. You look God-awful, and no one’s seen you in a year. Not since you disappeared in disgrace, to your alleged death. I’m the voice of Moscow gossip, Kuragin, and you’re the topic of the week, so tell me.

“My health, I’m afraid,” he said simply. “War didn’t agree with me.”

“ _Au contraire,_ ” she said, and brushed the end of her lace fan along the narrow scar on his cheek. “I think war suits you splendidly. A little fierceness, it strengthens your charm.”

Anatole flinched. This gossip who’d never thought of war beyond an inconvenience shortening the guest list of her soirées. She had the nerve to touch him, to treat him like a trophy. As if war were a fashionable holiday abroad. He wanted to slap the fan to the floor and spit in her face. But he took a breath, forcing the anger down. She wasn’t worth it. In another two months, people would forget there had ever been a war.

“Perhaps,” Anatole said, and graced her with a smile anyone could see meant _please go away._ “Fortunately, there’s no war going on now. Unlike Captain Dolokhov, fierce living wearies me.”

“Yes,” Anna said, glancing at Fedya and the daggers he was glaring in her direction. “I suppose so. And congratulations to you, Captain,” she said, with an artificial smile toward Fedya. “For the commendations. But then, we always knew war would suit _you_.”

Fedya bowed, without saying a thing.

“Well,” Anna said brightly, taking the hint, “I do hope to see more of you this season, Tolyshka. I’ve missed the liveliness you bring to these dull affairs.”

And with that, she swept away into the crowd, leaving Anatole staring after her, annoyed, exhausted, and facing a bewildered certainty that he had never given Anna Pavlovna permission to call him _that._

Hélène patted him perfunctorily on the shoulder. When he turned to face her and Fedya, both of them managed to keep a straight face, but their eyes were laughing. Anatole didn’t see what was so funny. Anna Pavlovna was a devil. It was Lena’s fault, for bringing that self-absorbed harpy-woman into her house. Making conversation with Napoleon himself would have been less irritating.

“Well done, you,” Helene said. “Now all of Moscow will know you’re back by tomorrow noon.”

Anatole laughed, understanding dawning. “That’s why you invited her.”

“She’s efficient as sin,” Fedya said, flashing a vulgar gesture at Anna’s back. “Gets around Moscow in the time it takes the devil to shit.”

“Surely you didn’t think I _like_ that old horse-faced gossip, Toto,” Helene said.

“Apologies for the slander.”

“Announcing Prince Ippolyt Vasilyevich Kuragin,” said the servant, from the door.

Anatole felt his heart shiver. He hadn’t seen his older brother in years. Not since Lito left to attend university in Paris, a move orchestrated by Vasily at least in part to help him avoid the war. It had hurt, then, that Vasily would protect Lito but not him, but that hardly seemed to matter now. Ippolyt had been protected. Anatole hadn’t. Well, that wasn’t Lito’s fault.

Anatole had expected Ippolyt to look like a stranger to him, after so long. But childhood did strange things to memory. He could still see the quiet, awkward teenager Lito had been, concealed now in the handsome, elegant man who strode through the door of the ballroom. Lito had been a fashion disaster in his youth. More than once, Anatole had seen his older brother stumble half-asleep down the stairs on a Saturday morning and wondered if Lito had gotten dressed in the dark. But Ippolyt had discovered sartorial elegance on the streets of Paris. He looked like a gentleman now. Someone who knew everyone, and who was worth knowing. His waistcoat was so blue it risked blinding people across the room, bright against the bold stripe of his shirt. His hair—dark blonde, somewhere between Hélène’s and Anatole’s—had been slicked back, and he smiled vaguely at the guests who greeted him at the door. But Ippolyt’s pale blue eyes weren’t focused on those people. They were scanning the crowd.

They widened, as he caught sight of Hélène and Anatole.

Then he cut straight through the crowd toward them.

“Little brother,” Ippolyt said, before he even reached them. “Thank God.”

“Lito.” Anatole extended a hand.

Ippolyt ignored it and tackled Anatole in a hug instead. Anatole choked in surprise. He could count on one hand the number of times he and his brother had shown any kind of affection to each other. He didn’t even need all the fingers. The death of their mother. The day of Ippolyt’s marriage. One drunken January night before Lito left for Paris. For the rest, terse handshakes and pointed nods. Anatole saw Fedya tense from the corner of his eye, ready to intervene, but there was no need. This was Lito. Empty-headed, unambitious, unassuming Lito. It wasn’t like Hélène, but Lito was family. Anatole hugged him back, his initial reaction surprise but not displeasure.

Ippolyt started talking the moment they broke apart. “ _Mon dieu,_ I can’t believe you’re here, _c’est incroyable, quand on m’a dit que t'étais mort, j’ai—_ ”

Anatole flinched. The torrent of French jerked him out of his head, like a hooked fish from the ocean. For a moment, the ballroom flickered and faded. He was no longer in Hélène’s house, no longer surrounded by family. He was underground, dark, cold, alone. The voices from the hall, speaking loudly, a swift stream of French, coming nearer. Footsteps. He felt his throat begin to close and a swift heat rushed through him, and he couldn’t move, his back was trapped against the wall and God it was so cold and the voices were coming nearer—

Fedya said nothing, but he squeezed Anatole’s hand.

The room edged back into focus. His breathing had halted before, but it was smoother now. Of course. He was being ridiculous. Lito had lived in Paris for five years now, and he’d been fluent in French long before that. He wasn’t doing it on purpose. It was simply how he thought. Hell, until the war, Anatole himself had talked like that. Took more than Napoleon murdering thousands of young men to shake Russian high society’s Francophile tendencies. Anatole squeezed Fedya’s hand back and returned his attention to his brother. Ippolyt, still chattering on, hadn’t noticed a thing.

“Lena told me you were a prisoner, and I’ve been trying to get home to see you for weeks, but the trains, _tu ne le croirais pas, les trains, merde,_ packed full with soldiers, it’s been a nightmare trying to get a ticket out of Paris.”

“How long have you been back?” Anatole said.

“Just a few days. I wanted to see you right away, but Lena said I should wait, not to overwhelm you with too many reunions.”

“And he knows better than to argue with me,” Hélène said, with a swat to Ippolyt’s back.

“Look at you,” Ippolyt said again, ignoring her. He put one hand on each of Anatole’s shoulders, holding him at arm’s length as if to see him better. “You’re thin as a ghost.”

Anatole shrugged. “Christ didn’t look like much either, back from the dead. At least I haven’t got holes in my hands.”

Ippolyt rolled his eyes, unperturbed. Frankly, given Anatole’s track record of blasphemy, this was him toning it down. He hadn’t even accused Christ of sleeping with his own disciples yet—a remark that had made for an unusually interesting Christmas dinner when he was sixteen.

“But they treated you all right, little brother?” Ippolyt said. “The French understand aristocracy. Rules of engagement. They aren’t barbarians.”

_We were going to go easy, little bird, but now I think we’ll take our time—_

No.

He would not lose himself in that again. Not here.

Anatole cleared his throat. “I don’t want to talk about it, Lito.”

Ippolyt shifted slightly, embarrassed. “All right. I just, I thought, we all thought…” He trailed off, shaking his head in wonder.

“I know,” Anatole said. “I’ll tell you, I promise. Later.”

Ippolyt’s smile seemed warmer than it had before the war. Anatole wondered what he’d seen in Paris. If that side of the war had changed his brother, the way the Russian front had changed him. Surely it had. You couldn’t live surrounded by fighting and not have it rub off on you in some way.

“ _Bien sûr,_ ” Ippolyt said. Then, as if catching sight of Fedya for the first time, he blushed, then gave a small half-bow. “I’m sorry,” he said brightly, and extended a hand. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced. Ippolyt Kuragin.”

Fedya grinned, shaking his hand. Anatole saw Ippolyt wince at the strength of Fedya’s grip, and bit his lip to stop from laughing. “I know,” Fedya said. “You were announced. Fedya Dolokhov.”

Ippolyt gaped—now Anatole really couldn’t help it, he did laugh. His brother’s mouth had fallen open so far a bird might have nested in it.

“Catching flies, Lito?” Hélène teased.

“Lena, you didn’t mention your Fedya was _the_ Captain Dolokhov,” Ippolyt spluttered. “ _Nom de dieu_ , you’re a regular hero. Back in Paris, I must have heard your name a hundred times. Kutuzov’s right-hand man, the bloodthirsty Dolokhov. They said you drank the blood of children. The French were terrified of you.”

Fedya smirked. “That was the idea.”

“You killed the shah, didn’t you?”

Fedya’s smirk dimmed. “His brother.”

“I didn’t know the shah had a brother,” Ippolyt said.

“Well,” Fedya said, “he doesn’t, now.”

This was all right, Anatole thought. There between Fedya and Hélène, with Lito. Yes, the rest of the world still darted stares at him when they thought he wasn’t looking. Yes, the whispers were less than subtle. Yes, this night would exhaust him, and as soon as it was over he’d retreat back to the flat he and Fedya shared and sleep for two days if he could manage it. But the four of them. It felt like, without the rest of the world present, it would have been easy, for them. He let his guard dip, until his shoulders no longer hovered somewhere around his ears. He could do this. It was only people. People were nothing to be afraid of.

“Announcing Prince Vasily Sergeyevich Kuragin,” said the servant at the door.

_People were nothing to be afraid of._

As Vasily entered the ballroom, his black eyes went straight to his three children and Fedya, who had all turned to look at him.

Vasily smiled.

“All right?” Fedya said to Anatole.

Anatole swallowed. “Yes,” he said, as his father crossed the room to meet them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A million and six thanks to you glorious people who have kudoed and commented and humored me. Every time I get those notifications at my office job, I smile like an idiot. HR's gonna ask me why, and God knows what I'll say then, but it's a risk I'm willing to take.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Vasily Kuragin is every bit as much of a dick as you suspected, and I have (whoops) accidentally killed Boris Drubetskoy.

As Vasily crossed the ballroom, Hélène realized she’d stopped breathing. She shook her head. This was ridiculous. She couldn’t fold now. Anatole needed her to be strong for him. And she would be. She wasn’t afraid of her father anymore. She wasn’t afraid. But just because she wasn’t afraid, that didn’t mean she wanted to see him, or speak to him, or be near him, any more than either of her brothers did. She’d have sold her soul without blinking, if it meant she could go the rest of her life without sharing a room with Vasily Kuragin.

Vasily had never been a father to any of them, in any sense but the biological one. He was a chess player, and his children were pieces—some more expendable than others, but all up for sacrifice, when there was something to gain. He’d paired Hélène off with Pierre as soon as the bespectacled fool came into money. It hadn’t mattered how many times she protested she couldn’t bear Pierre, or his touch, or Moscow, or any of it. And then he’d sent Lito to Paris. Hedging his bets, Hélène saw now, in case the war ended badly. If Napoleon’s crowd ended up taking residence in the Kremlin, having a French son would do wonders to recommend clever, charismatic Vasily Sergeyevich for a high position in the new order.

And Anatole, well.

Anatole was the pawn who’d failed to play his part. Failed to make an advantageous marriage when the deal Vasily had brokered for Nikolai Bolkonsky’s daughter went up in flames. Failed to advance his social capital when he’d married a Polish woman in the war, though that hadn’t been Anatole’s idea, and most of society still didn’t know about it. Failed to protect the family name when he’d attempted to elope with a betrothed countess, getting himself thrown out of Moscow in disgrace. Failed to earn distinction in the war, earning a position as a junior corporal—as an aristocrat, the lowest you could go. What chess player wouldn’t sacrifice a piece who’d served its purpose so badly?

In his eyes, Anatole had more value dead than alive. At least then Vasily could use his philandering second son for sympathy. _Your son, Vasily Sergeyevich, I’m so sorry to have heard. He was no pillar of society, of course, but still, one does what one can with one’s children, and we do love them anyway, despite their faults. If there’s ever anything you need, Vasily Sergeyevich, in this difficult time, please. Do not hesitate._ In the months they’d believed Anatole to be dead, Hélène had seen Vasily accept those condolences with a saint’s martyred smile. Heard him quietly murmur in the ears of his sympathizers. Heard them grant the favors he’d asked without hesitation. Seen him bow his head in sad, benevolent gratitude. A career on the stage, wasted.

Now, they stood opposite one another, Anatole and Vasily, in Hélène’s ballroom. Their father was dressed as elegantly as ever in a smooth green dinner jacket, salt-and-pepper hair neatly combed and pomaded. She wasn’t sure when it happened, but her little brother stood as tall as her father now. Hélène could still remember when Anatole had come up to Vasily’s hip. They looked like reversed reflections—Vasily black-eyed and brown-haired, Anatole light-eyed and fair like their mother. But the resemblance was unshakeable. Tall and narrow-boned, high forehead, proud bearing. Eyes that said nothing. Or at least tried to.

Hélène and her brothers had learned how to hide what they thought, but they’d never learned to do it as well as their father. Beneath the thin layer of his social mask, Anatole was afraid. Vasily was unreadable. Looking at his son, he might have felt anything between relief and revulsion.

“Anatole,” he said. “Thank God you’re alive.”

“Papa.” Anatole bowed straight at the waist and kissed Vasily’s extended hand. Hélène had never seen Vasily embrace either of her brothers, not once. Now did not seem to be the time to start.

“And Ippolyt, back again in Russia,” Vasily said, turning to his eldest son.

“Anything to see my little brother again,” Lito said, with a bright smile like a slap.

Vasily caught the bite in Lito’s words. Of course he did, Hélène thought. Her father had all but invented the game of saying less and more than you meant. He’d taught Hélène and her brothers everything they knew. Vasily heard what Lito hadn’t said— _my brother means nothing to you, Papa, I can see it in your eyes_ —but he let it pass.

“I’m sorry,” he said, with a glass-thin smile toward Fedya. “I don’t believe we’ve met.” He did not introduce himself, as Ippolyt had done.

“We have, in fact,” Fedya said.

More than once, too. Fedya had been a semi-permanent fixture around the Kuragin manor in Petersburg before the war. Hélène had introduced Fedya to her father by name at least twice. But Vasily persisted in the Old World custom of refusing to recall the existence of people who could not serve you.

“Your name?” Vasily said, when Fedya made no sign of giving it.

“Captain Fyodor Ivanovich Dolokhov. Anatole’s friend.”

Hélène let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was still holding. Rude, yes, but she’d feared worse from Fedya. It took no stretch of the imagination to picture him responding _Fedya Dolokhov. I’ve slept with two of your children, and the night’s young for the third._

“Charmed,” Vasily said thinly. He did not bow toward Fedya, who remained military-straight himself. “Come,” he said, gesturing toward a small table at the edge of the ballroom. “Sit with me. It’s been too long since I’ve been among my children. And their friends.”

Hélène glanced back at Anatole. He smiled, meaning to reassure her. Oddly, it did. He was humming with anxiety; she could almost feel him vibrate with it. But in that smile, she saw determination as well as fear. He could do this. So long as he had her, Fedya, and Lito at his side, he could do this. Hélène smiled back, then followed their father.

Behind them, the small orchestra in the corner of the room began the first dance number of the evening, a mazurka of which Hélène was particularly fond. Her mother had sung it, once. A traditional folk song, bright and thoughtless. To other people, it would be a happy song. A few bold couples moved to the center of the room to begin the dance, followed by several shyer pairs who had needed someone else to make the first move.

Ignoring the dancers, Vasily pulled out a chair from the table and sat, gesturing at Hélène to take the other. “Sit, my dear. The hostess only stands at peasant gatherings.”

She didn’t move. That was ridiculous. Anatole had only mastered walking a week ago. He looked so pale standing there between Lito and Fedya, as if his legs might collapse beneath him at any time.

“He’s right, Lena,” Anatole said with a smile. “People will think you were raised in a barn.”

He gave her a pointed look. They’d always been able to speak without speaking, and she read his silence easily: _don’t say anything, Lena. I need you to lie for me._ He was right, at that. The last thing he needed was for Vasily to find more places of weakness in him. In their father’s world, men were strong, stronger than anything war could throw at them. Anatole would put on an act. The dutiful son, returned safe and happy from the war. It was his job to lie, Hélène to look like she believed it.

Hélène sat, watching as Vasily’s eyes took a slow pan of Anatole. Sizing him up. Judging what difference a year could make. It did not seem he liked the change.

“You came home after the armistice?” Vasily asked.

Anatole cleared his throat. “Yes. Shortly after.”

“Six weeks ago. And you didn’t think to tell me you were alive until when?”

Anatole looked down at his shoes.

“Until when, Anatole?” Vasily repeated, as if he didn’t already know.

“Last week,” he said quietly.

“Last week,” Vasily repeated. “Well, I’m glad your sister deigned to tell me, in any case. I might have found out I still have two sons from Anna Pavlovna, like the rest of Russia.”

Hélène’s stomach felt like a tiny ship on a rough sea. She could barely look at Anatole. Her little brother seemed almost like a child again. He stood silent, hands clasped behind his back, listening to Vasily enumerate his faults with quiet, ashamed resignation. She hated seeing him that way. Hated remembering how often this had happened. Hated remembering how much further it had gone.

For Hélène, it had stopped at words. Insults, cutting remarks, shouting, until she hardened into iron and vowed she’d never let a man make her cry again. Her brothers’ childhoods had been different. Vasily had never beaten Anatole himself, of course. He’d called in servants for that. Hélène tried to stop it once, when she was eleven and Anatole nine. Vasily held her by the hand and made her watch until Anatole fell to his knees, crying on the carpet, his back red and bruised. Now, Anatole looked fixedly at his shoes, the way he had as a child. As if Vasily were a Gorgon, and punishment could be avoided by never looking directly at him.

Hélène shot a warning look at Fedya. If she wanted to strike her father, it was nothing compared to what Fedya must have longed to do.

But Fedya was not looking at her. Without speaking, he leaned gently against Anatole, nudging him with his shoulder. Hélène could see the strength the subtle gesture gave Anatole, the way he stood up straighter and raised his eyes from the ground. Fedya was reckless and cruel, a brute and a gambler and a killer, but he was also the kindest man Hélène had ever met. She’d tell him so, she decided, after the evening was over. He’d deny it, but they’d both know the truth.

“It’s not his fault, Papa,” Hélène said. Her own social mask didn’t let her down. Her smile was as bright as ever. “It’s mine. I should have written.”

“I thought we taught your brother how to hold a pen,” Vasily said coolly.

“Toto was ill, when he came home,” Hélène said, swallowing her anger. “Very ill.”

“And you’ve been taking care of him, my dear?” Vasily said. He reached over and took her hand, and Hélène stifled a shiver. It was as if she were still eleven in his eyes, not a married woman of twenty-six.

“Yes,” she said. “Fedya and I.”

“Forgive me, but you ought to have called in a real doctor,” Vasily said with a small smile. “I’ll have my physician visit you later this week, Anatole. You look a little… _épuisé, disons,_ but he’ll make you presentable enough to call on Julie Drubetskaya in a week or so.”

Anatole blinked. Hélène felt her stomach drop to her heels. She should have known. She clenched her fists, hating herself for not seeing this coming.

“Presentable enough to what?” he said.

“Come now, don’t be surprised,” Vasily said. “The war is over, and Moscow has too many widows. Of course, the loss of Madame Drubetskaya’s husband at the front was tragic, but she’s young, and remarrying might help her work through this difficult time, don’t you think?”

“Papa,” Hélène said.

He ignored her entirely.

Another mercenary marriage. What else? Julie Drubetskaya was too new of a widow to be a tactful choice, but she was rich, painfully rich, and after all Vasily only had two weeks to come up with a plan. Hélène could see how it played out in his head. The beautiful young widow, still mourning the loss of her husband, meets the handsome young soldier back from the dead. Weary, hopeful eyes meet across a drawing room. Two broken souls coming together to heal. Engaged within the month, married in six. A fairy tale for the Moscow drawing room. Another rung up the social ladder for the Kuragins. And for Vasily, his scapegrace son safely locked up in a respectable marriage, where he couldn’t make any more trouble. It was neat, perhaps a little too neat, but Vasily’s narratives never left room for loose ends.

A year ago, Anatole wouldn’t have fought this. He’d have laughed and shrugged and let Vasily’s plans sweep him along, until his own disreputable behavior ruined the match and the whole question became a moot point. But he had changed, now. Whatever had been holding back the angry, nervous energy twitching behind his ribs, that was gone. And Hélène knew her brother wouldn’t take the quiet way out.

Lito reached out to rest a hand on his shoulder, sensing what Hélène had sensed, but Anatole shrugged him off.

“This is mad,” he said. “I’m not doing it.”

“Anatole, come now—”

“I’m already married, Papa,” Anatole snapped.

“Oh, that’s a concern for you now, is it?” Vasily shot back. “If your wife needs grounds for divorce, I think all of Moscow can tell her a pretty tale about your infidelity.”

Lito glanced over his shoulder at the crowd, several members of which had begun to subtly edge closer to them, hoping to overhear. “Papa,” he said, “people are staring.”

Vasily cleared his throat. When he spoke again, he had lowered his voice, and the false cast of his smile was firmly back in place. “It’s a good match,” he said. “You should be grateful. Isn’t that what you spent your time as a prisoner thinking of? Strong wine and a good woman?”

Hélène could have killed him then. Stabbed him through the throat with the spike of her heel and watched him choke on his own blood. If he had any blood at all, in that cold heart of his. If melted snow didn’t run through Vasily Kuragin’s veins instead.

“Papa,” Hélène began again.

“Where do you think I _was_?”

Hélène flinched. She had never heard Anatole’s voice that cold before. That deadly. It was like a viper had crawled into her brother’s throat to hiss through his teeth. Even Vasily drew back an inch.

“I almost died in that prison,” Anatole said, in that poisonous voice. “That’s what I thought of. Death, and how badly I wanted it. You want to know why I didn’t visit you? Because it took me until now to see a man in uniform without wanting to scream. Lena was frightened of me. She won’t say it, but she was. And your concern is when I’ll be ready to fuck a dead man’s wife?”

The words cut straight through Hélène. She clenched her fists at her sides, stopping herself from taking her brother’s hand. Every inch of her wanted to embrace Anatole and lead him away from their father. She knew what was coming next. He’d fought so hard for calm, and now his voice was rising out of his control. In a moment, he’d be shouting, or worse. She wanted to hold him and tell him she hadn’t been afraid, she’d never be afraid of him, she couldn’t. He was her little brother, he was Anatole, her best friend and her confidant, her sun, her world, _Toto_ , how could she fear him? He wouldn’t believe it, because it wasn’t true, but she wanted to say it, and he needed to hear it.

But she couldn’t interfere. Not until this ran its course. Anatole had to do this alone.

“Anatole,” Vasily said. He closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb. “My boy. There’s no call to be vulgar.”

Anatole laughed. “War is vulgar, Papa. If not now, when?”

“Prince Anatole?”

They turned as one to the young woman who had spoken, standing behind Lito. Hélène stared. She’d thought this couldn’t get worse.

But Natalya Rostova stood there staring at Anatole, and lo and behold, somehow it had gotten worse.

Natasha looked beautiful, she thought grudgingly. Her dress, deep blue chiffon, draped modestly over her shoulders, and her wide, dark eyes glittered as they looked at Anatole. He stared back, thrown off balance by her appearance.

Stupid girl, Hélène thought. Couldn’t she see when she wasn’t wanted? Hélène hadn’t invited her, God knew, but Pierre must have asked her to come. To throw their affair in her face, one more time, now in front of society. Well, good riddance to bad rubbish. She couldn’t have picked a worse moment.

“Countess Natalya,” she said coldly, “how lovely. I’ll remind my brother to find you later, after we’ve finished a private family discussion.”

Natasha blushed, though not without a quick glance at Fedya, no doubt wondering how he was somehow allowed to join this private family discussion. But she didn’t back down. In fact, she ignored Hélène altogether. She gave a small curtsey in front of Anatole, then extended a hand. Anatole stared as if he’d never seen a hand before.

“Forgive me for interrupting,” she said. “But I wondered if I might have the honor of this dance.”

Anatole paused. Then, he laughed quietly to himself and took Natasha’s hand. He bent to kiss it, then, without letting go of her hand, looked over his shoulder toward Vasily. Their father looked on with a strange expression, as though he’d just inhaled something rancid.

“You’ll excuse me, Papa,” Anatole said, with his most winning smile. “I can’t possibly say no to Countess Natalya.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *in my best Ursula voice* Feedback? My dear, sweet child. It's what I *live* for.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey friends, so I lied. This fic will be 18 chapters, not 17. This is why I should neither outline stories nor do math, as I am apparently bad at both.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for sticking with me! Three more chapters to follow after this one, coming as soon as my stupid grad program will allow me to finish them.

Passively, Anatole allowed Natasha to take his arm and lead him to the center of the ballroom. The orchestra had just begun a waltz, for which he briefly thanked God. Something simple. Nothing difficult. Inappropriate, too, of course. Natasha had chosen the only dance that required them to actually touch, body to body, intimately. Anatole could imagine Marya Dmitrievna turning in her grave at the scandal, and she wasn’t even dead. But he could waltz in his sleep, and the last thing he needed this evening was to pass out in the middle of a mazurka.

He could almost hear the room stop breathing as they moved together, his hand on her back, hers on his shoulder. A loud shatter broke through the music. Anatole glanced over Natasha’s shoulder, curious. Anna Pavlovna had dropped her glass, and now watched them with her jaw almost on the ground, broken glass and champagne spilling across the floor.

Anatole gave an undignified snort of laughter. Christ. If this wasn’t the most ridiculous thing. This was a stupid idea. So stupid he hadn’t even thought to suggest it himself. Well, if the goal was to get Moscow society to see him, he’d certainly achieved that much. He pushed Anna Pavlovna from his mind and led Natasha into the dance.

The waltz was slow and intimate, giving Anatole plenty of opportunity to look into Natasha’s eyes. Beautiful as ever, but the expression in them didn’t make sense. She hated him. She’d made that clear. But she was smiling. And she’d asked him to _dance_. You didn’t dance with people you hated, or else Anatole would have been waltzing circles round the ballroom with Pierre Bezukhov from the moment he arrived.

At last, he broke down and asked. “Why did you ask me to dance, Natalie?”

Natasha bit her lip and looked down. It really was charming, her embarrassment. How badly, how fiercely she wanted to be liked. As if that was hard for anyone to do.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But you looked so dreadfully unhappy talking to your father, I felt I ought to.”

Anatole smiled, and both of their unease faded at once. There she was. The Natasha he’d known before. A clever and capable woman, but with a child’s sense of morality. If a thing were good, why then, she ought to do it, and that was it. It surprised him how gratifying he found it, that one thing had stayed the same despite the war. Even Moscow couldn’t stamp the goodness out of Natasha Rostova. Cruelty didn’t suit her. The last time they’d spoken, she’d been surprised, and she’d been wounded, and her words had cut hard. But he should have known her hatred would be as fast and brief as their affair.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’m afraid you’ll pay for your kindness, with these people.”

She glanced away from him, stealing a look at the ring of people around them. Every one of them staring. More than one with a glass of champagne halfway to their lips, completely forgotten. She shook her head. Would have shrugged, but it was difficult to both waltz and shrug. “Isn’t this the way to show them we’ve put it behind us?” she asked.

“Have we put it behind us?” he said.

Natasha blushed. “I have,” she said. “I won’t speak for you.”

He said nothing. He’d thought he loved her, once. He really did. But now, dancing here with Natasha, he could see more clearly. He’d misunderstood, then. This was beautiful, him and Natasha, but it wasn’t love. Love wasn’t always as pretty as this, it wasn’t as simple, but it was always _more_.

“Was it very awful?” Natasha asked softly.

Anatole blinked. He’d let his focus slip, had barely heard her. “What?”

“The war,” Natasha said. “We heard stories, here, but no one who went will tell me honestly. Was it awful?”

Anatole closed his eyes, for a single measure of the music. He forced himself not to tighten his grip on Natasha’s hand. “Yes,” he said. “It was.”

Natasha bit her lip. Weighing, it seemed, the wisdom of what she wanted to ask next. “Were,” she began, and stopped.

“Natalie,” he said. “It’s all right. I’m here. Ask me.”

The shadow of a smile crossed her lips. Anatole laughed under his breath, knowing what she was thinking. All the other times he had whispered those same words to her, _it’s all right, I’m here_. He hadn’t meant then what he meant now.

Natasha’s smile didn’t last. “You fought at Borodino, Pierre said.”

“Yes.”

“Were you with Andrey when—”

She didn’t finish. He didn’t need her to.

Fedya had told him what happened to Lieutenant Bolkonsky at the front. Anatole hadn’t asked, but Fedya told him anyway. Reasoning it was the sort of thing he should know. Anatole had never liked Andrey. Of course, Andrey was hard to like. Cold, formal, distant, haughty and cruel without meaning to be. More than once, Anatole had wished Andrey would trip and fall into a well, reasoning that the water would at least breathe some life into his dusty personality. But still. What had happened to the stoic lieutenant at the front. No one deserved to die that slowly. Not even Andrey.

“No,” he said. “I was…I was gone. By then.”

She nodded, blushing slightly. “Of course.”

“But I’m glad you could see him, at the end,” he said. “He was a good man.”

He didn’t know this. In fact, he wasn’t at all sure it was true. But from the way Natasha squeezed his hand, it seemed to be the thing to say.

“Yes. He was.”

The orchestra let the final note of the waltz linger, before a soft silence descended over the ballroom. No applause from the crowd, not this time. Their attention was still locked on Natasha and Anatole. Neither of them cared, anymore, what other people thought.

He bowed low. When he rose, his head shivered with vertigo, and he swayed slightly before steadying himself on Natasha’s shoulder. He blushed, ashamed of his own weakness. Natasha, brilliant soul that she was, let him keep his pride without saying a word about it. Waltzing, he knew now, had been too ambitious. He would regret it by the end of the night, if he didn’t faint before then.

“Thank you for the escape, Natalie,” he said, and turned to go.

“Anatole.”

He turned back. “Yes?”

Natasha looked at her shoe, abashed. It made Anatole smile, to see the naïve hesitation in her manner. Charming, he thought. Truly. He’d been wrong about so many things, but he hadn’t been wrong there.

“Captain Dolokhov?” Natasha asked.

Charming, and perceptive.

It never occurred to him to deny it. She hadn’t asked it with disgust. He wasn’t ashamed. And he owed her the truth, among other things.

“Yes,” he said. “For a while now.”

“He isn’t…cruel to you, is he?”

“He treats me better than I deserve,” Anatole said, without a trace of shame.

“I thought he would,” she said, “but I was worried. He’s so fierce. Frightening.”

Anatole laughed. “Everyone’s frightened of Fedya,” he said. “But he’s a saint, under all the bluster and fire.”

“Good,” she said sincerely. “I think he’s better for you than I was.”

He stood there another moment, watching her. This kind young woman, bright and caring and beautiful. He’d loved her, once, in a way. And she him. Though he’d doubted the truth of her affection in the aftermath of their affair, he doubted it less now. But Natasha’s kindness wasn’t like Fedya’s.

Fedya had taken Anatole at his weakest and saved his life, day by day. Cared for him, challenged him, believed in him, teased him, put the entire world on a shelf to stand by his side. It had been electrifying, before the war, to be loved by someone as innocent as Natasha. Now, he could see the power of being loved by someone whose innocence was gone. Someone who knew the world was cruel and dark and terrible, but who loved you anyway, because they couldn’t help it, and what other choice was there?

“I think you’re right,” he said. “And Pierre is kind to you?”

Natasha blushed scarlet. “Anatole, we aren’t—”

“If you’re lying to me because of my sister,” he said, with a wave of his hand, “don’t. She knows what’s happening.”

She blushed still deeper, which Anatole hadn’t thought possible. “I know you don’t like him,” she said. “But he wasn’t right for Hélène. He knows he made mistakes, and he’s trying to be better. He’s a dear, truly.”

“It doesn’t matter if I like him,” he said, not even pretending to deny that he didn’t. “As long as he’s better to you than he was to Lena.” He paused, then looked at her with his head cocked slightly to the side. “Tell me if I’m an idiot, Natalie—”

“You are.”

He wrinkled his nose at her, which made her laugh. “But I like the idea of our being friends,” he finished.

She smiled. “I like it too,” she said.

Anatole bowed again and brushed his lips against the back of Natasha’s hand. “I won’t keep you,” he said. “I think Pierre is coming up with startlingly inventive new ways to kill me.”

Natasha glanced over her shoulder toward the side of the room where Pierre stood, glaring daggers at Anatole while throttling a glass of white wine. She laughed, hiding the giggle behind one hand.

“I’ll deal with him,” she said.

They split off, then. Natasha toward Pierre, Anatole toward his family and Fedya. When he glanced back over his shoulder, Pierre was speaking to Natasha, quickly, with a furrowed brow. Anatole knew her, knew what she must have been saying. _It’s nothing, Petrushka, I didn’t mean anything by it, how many times have I told you? I made a mistake. He was a mistake. But he’s just a man, Pierre. A man who’s been through hell and could use some kindness._

As Anatole rejoined the group, Hélène raised her eyebrows so dramatically they risked disappearing into her hair. He shrugged, taking Fedya’s hand in a way that would have been a kiss in private. Fedya tightened his grip briefly before releasing it. A tiny gesture, one that asked _what the hell was that for_ without speaking. Anatole would explain it to him, later. Fedya was jealous by nature, yes, but for something like this, he would understand.

Vasily’s disapproval, on the other hand, was less subtle. He glowered at Anatole, and his fingers beat out a rapid rhythm on the arm of the chair. Ippolyt glanced at Anatole, a warning look, but something had shifted within Anatole, during the dance. The fear wasn’t gone, but it had been shoved to the back of his mind. Like a dull murmur. Easy to ignore.

“Really, Anatole,” Vasily hissed. “What in the name of hell—”

“Natalya Rostova,” Anatole said, with a shrug meant to offend. “Charming girl. You remember her, Papa, I’m sure. From the Tsar’s ball.”

Under his breath, Fedya groaned. Anatole ignored him. If he wasn’t allowed to be an ass to his own father, why even come to evenings like these?

“How dare you,” Vasily said. “Have you no thought at all for your reputation?”

Anatole laughed. “The kind of reputation I have is very hard to ruin.”

He took a breath, feeling strength rise in his throat. Where had the fear gone, and where had this courage come from? From Natasha, risking so much to be kind to him? From Lito, letting affection flash through his decades-old mask? From Hélène, his rock and his foundation, understanding the depths of him? From Fedya, there at his side, believing in him as he believed in the motion of the earth? Or maybe it was his own courage, no one else’s. Whatever the case, when he spoke, the words were strong.

“I’ll have no part in your schemes, Papa. I didn’t live through the war to take orders from a snake like you.”

Vasily stood up. The chair shrieked across the floor, causing not a few heads to whip in their direction. Lito flinched and tried to say something, but he didn’t quite manage the words. Anatole didn’t blink. He’d faced worse than his father. This old aristocrat with his selfish manipulations and his cold logic. Anatole had been to hell and back, had seen demons that would set his father trembling. It would take more than this, he thought, to frighten him.

“You’ll do as I say,” Vasily said, “or you’ll have nothing from me. Nothing. You’ll be nobody, like this peasant soldier who follows you like a dog. Is that what you want?”

Anatole took Fedya’s hand. For once, he was the one standing steady, while Fedya’s hand shook.

“Fedya’s worth a hundred of you,” he said. “If you want Moscow to know you’ve disowned your son the returning soldier, I won’t stop you. I don’t need your money, or your respect.”

A voice in his head whispered for him to kiss Fedya, there in front of his father and the shining stars of Moscow’s firmament, then spit at Vasily’s feet and leave. He considered it, letting the image linger in his mind like wine. It was a sweet notion. Intoxicating. But whatever Fedya and Hélène thought, he did have some level of self-control. Not much, but some.

“We’re here for the evening,” Anatole said instead. “All of us. So make the best of it, hm?”

 

* * *

 

The guests filtered out past midnight, with the clatter of carriages and the sweep of troika rails against the snow. Lito paused at the door, fumbling with something in the pocket of his waistcoat. He seemed to have more trouble than usual with the simple gesture, as if his hands weren’t quite obeying him. Finally, he unearthed a card and pressed it into Anatole’s hand. A Petersburg address. Anatole recognized the street. Not far from where they’d grown up. Lito must have done well for himself in France.

“My new house,” Lito said, with a voice that cracked a little. “For when you’re in Petersburg next. I don’t want to go so long without seeing you.”

“I’ll come,” Anatole said. “Soon.”

“I hope—” Lito began.

Words, at that point, were out of reach. Lito abandoned the sentence and hugged Anatole to him, tight enough it almost hurt. As if an embrace could keep him here, could keep him safe. Anatole held him back, a long moment. Lito let him go, then cleared his throat awkwardly, shifted his weight a little. Unsure of what to do.

“I’ll be all right, Lito,” Anatole said. “ _Ce n’est rien._ ”

The French felt ugly on his tongue. Vile. But it was worth it, for the warmth that filled Lito’s smile at the sound of it. Ippolyt’s elegant, sophisticated little brother, back from the dead. One more piece of acting. Well, the evening was almost over.

At last, Lito left, though not without another glance back, as though half-convinced Anatole had been a dream.

When Vasily pushed past them, he was deep in conversation with Mikhail Kirilovich and didn’t even look at them.

Soon, the three of them stood alone. Anatole, Fedya, and Hélène, at the front door of the empty house.

The moment the last carriage rattled away, Anatole slid down the wall to sit on the floor. His mind was fuzzy, his knees trembled under his own weight, and he could feel a headache building somewhere behind his eyes. He took his head in both hands and let all his breath spill out of him. Fedya sat beside him, and Anatole leaned his head on Fedya’s shoulder. He felt Fedya’s arm wrap around him, tracing slow, nonsense patterns down his upper arm.

“You were brilliant,” Hélène said. She sat on Anatole’s other side, despite her expensive gown now getting ruined against the floor. “The toast of Moscow.”

“Are you surprised?” Fedya said. “Tolya could charm the skirts off a statue.”

Pierre passed through the hall, clearly tired and in a sour mood, on his way to bed. He paused a moment, looking at them with a curious expression. Anatole didn’t blink. The night had drained him dry, and he could hardly think, couldn’t feel anything, not even fear. Pierre could do what he liked, it didn’t matter. He let himself drift, lost in the comfort of Fedya’s touch, Fedya’s smell, Fedya. The world felt dreamlike, warmer and gentler in the late-night quiet.

A good fifteen seconds passed. Pierre was still staring at Anatole and Fedya, leaning against one another on the floor. His brow was furrowed, as if trying to work out a complicated Greek translation.

Fedya kissed Anatole on the forehead and then looked straight into Pierre’s eyes with his brows arched, in a way that said _Is there a problem?_

Pierre turned scarlet and fell prey to a sudden fit of coughing. Apparently he hadn’t put the pieces together until that exact moment. Anatole couldn’t bring himself to care. Natasha would have told him, eventually.

Pierre cleared his throat. “Promise me you won’t host another soirée for at least a month,” he said at last to Hélène, with unconvincing calm.

“Seconded,” Anatole said wearily.

Hélène laughed. “Not for a year, if I can help it,” she said. “You did splendidly, husband. You can resume ignoring us whenever you like.”

Anatole could see Pierre still trying to work out the tangled mess in his head. Saw the exact moment the realization dawned on him, that every person sitting on that floor had slept with everyone else. Anatole laughed. He didn’t love Pierre, Christ, he didn’t even _like_ Pierre, but still, it was hard not to feel sorry for him. If he didn’t want to find a three-way romance between his wife, his brother-in-law, and a dangerous war hero in the front hall of his home, marrying into the Kuragin family had been a terrible decision.

“Will you come to bed?” Pierre said quietly, already knowing the answer.

“Not tonight, Petrushka, darling,” Fedya said. “But I’m flattered.”

Anatole and Hélène broke down laughing, as Pierre’s blush deepened.

“Go to bed, Pierre,” Hélène said.

Pierre stammered something unintelligible, then bolted up the stairs. Anatole nestled closer to Fedya, nuzzling his head against his shoulder. It was childish, and he knew it, but it felt nice. And judging by the small hum that came from Fedya, he wasn’t the only one to think so.

It was so easy like this, he thought. Quiet, simple. No one around but Fedya and Hélène. No pressure, no fear, no one looking at him as if he’d stripped naked in the middle of a ballroom. It should have been like this all the time.

It could be, he realized. If they weren’t in Moscow. If they didn’t have to be _themselves_ in Moscow.

“We should go away for a while,” Anatole said softly.

Fedya gave a soft hum, considering. “Where?” he asked.

Anatole loved him more than ever in that moment, the fact that he hadn’t said _no_ , or _why_. “I don’t care,” he said. “Anywhere. Just not Moscow.”

Fedya nodded. He didn’t ask Anatole to explain. Of course not—Fedya knew exactly why he wanted to get away. It was different, for Fedya, but in some ways, not so terribly different. Moscow summed them both up in a single sentence. Anatole Kuragin, invalid disaster back from the dead. Fedya Dolokhov, vulgar assassin who might kill any of them at any time. It was exhausting, living under the shadow of the city’s narrow-minded misperceptions, day in and day out.

“I know a place,” Fedya said, after a moment. “In the country. My mother and I used to go there when I was small. It’s not far, for a weekend journey.”

Anatole smiled. He liked to imagine it, little seven-year-old Fedya, holding his mother’s hand as they explored the countryside. It seemed implausible that Fedya had ever even _been_ a child, given the bold, strong man beside him, with his brusque manner and boundless confidence, frightening young women just by existing. But the unlikeliness of it gave the image its charm.

“I’d like that,” he said.

“Lena?” Fedya said, across Anatole. “Would you come?”

Hélène’s expression was like a rat had just taken a shit on her bare foot. “To the _country?”_

Anatole laughed. “Is that a no?”

“The country,” she repeated. “With insects and mud and wolves and rain and _peasants_. Really?”

“So that’s definitely a no.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, kudos, yelling at me for the terrible shit I do to Andrey, pick your poison. I love them all.


	16. Chapter 16

They took the first train out of Moscow Sunday morning, then a troika out from Smolensk, and then set out to walk the remaining two miles. There were no roads, toward where they were heading. It wasn’t even a town, exactly, just a cluster of cabins deep in the woods, on a rise overlooking the river. The troika couldn’t make through the close-packed trees, so they forged their own way, along footpaths barely wide enough for two men. At first, Fedya stayed close at Anatole’s side, ready to help him over treacherous ground. But when Anatole accused him of hovering—“like a damn mother hen, Fedya, honestly, and they called you an assassin? Grow a backbone”—he hung back, letting Anatole make his own way.

He paused for a moment at a bend in the path, wrapped in his fur coat. Watching Anatole a few steps ahead.

It was like magic, he thought. Anatole looked like some kind of elvin prince, tall and slender with his silver hair dusted with snow. A green-clad shape weaving elegantly through the trees. His boots barely seemed to leave footprints in the snow. Fedya could gladly have stood there watching him forever. Anatole could command a city, master a ballroom, enchant a salon. Fedya had never considered what he could do in a thicket of trees. The whole world seemed to stop, birds and wind and snow, to watch him. Inhuman. Impossible.

Then Anatole turned and spread his arms in exasperation. The look of impatience on his wind-stung face was all too human.

“Are you coming?”

Fedya lengthened his stride. He still moved faster than Anatole these days, and closed the distance between them in seconds. “We can’t all have legs that go on for two weeks,” he said.

“Anyone would think _you_ were the one learning to walk again.”

“Not far now, anyway. Five minutes.”

Fedya caught Anatole doing it again. Glancing up, through the web of dead trees, squinting against the slow-drifting snow. Stealing glances at the sky.

“Do you like it here?” Fedya asked.

Anatole took Fedya’s hand, a quick squeeze of thanks. “It’s perfect.”

They stepped out of the woods into a large clearing, a hundred yards across. A handful of log cabins scattered across the space, three or four forming a sort of miniature compound. In the center of the clearing stood a large fire pit, ringed with stones. A dark-haired man and a blonde woman sat near it, dressed simply but warmly, cleaning the feathers off a fresh-caught pheasant. They were obviously involved, if not married, from the way they sat hip to hip, and the way the man kept playfully teasing the woman as they worked.

Anatole paused at the edge of the clearing. He glanced at Fedya, nervous but not afraid.

“It’s all right,” Fedya said. “I know them.”

Nikolai and Sasha. Friends of his mother’s. Good, plain-living people, who lived off the land and drank like the sea. Fedya, his mother, and his sister had shared countless meals with them when he was a child. Nikolai had taught Fedya how to hunt; Sasha taught him how to box. He hadn’t seen them in a decade or more.

“Good afternoon,” Fedya said wryly.

They glanced up from the bird, then stood up in surprise.

“Little Fyodor Dolokhov, all grown up,” Sasha said, kissing him on both cheeks. “And how is your family? Tired of getting you out of trouble?”

“Exhausted,” Fedya said, embracing Nikolai as well. “I’ll give them your best. God, it’s good to see you.”

“And who on earth is this?” Nikolai said, turning to Anatole.

Anatole flushed slightly. The couple didn’t mean to judge him, but still, anyone who looked at Anatole for three seconds would know he didn’t belong in a place like this. Everything about him screamed Petersburg. He looked like an aristocrat dropped into the middle of the woods because he _was_ one, he couldn’t help that. Fedya took his hand, with a meaningful look at Nikolai and Sasha. _He’s with me,_ said the look. _That’s all that matters._

Fedya’s touch seemed to give Anatole confidence to speak. “Anatole Kuragin,” he said. “Fedya’s…” He broke off, looking at Fedya, head cocked slightly. “What am I, exactly?”

Fedya laughed. Good question. _Intended_ was the right level of serious, but logistically ridiculous—intended what? _Partner_ felt too mercantile, like they co-managed a law practice. _Friend_ was dishonest—certainly they’d crossed the bounds of friendship long ago. _Lover_ was a bit lurid for a married couple Anatole had only just met in the woods two minutes ago.

He shrugged and kissed Anatole on the lips, soft but decisive. Anatole gave a surprised hum before warming to the kiss, which made Fedya laugh. It was nice to know he could out-seduce Anatole Kuragin, even if only on occasion. Outside of Moscow, Anatole’s kiss already seemed easier, more familiar. Less afraid.

Fedya broke the kiss and turned back to Nikolai and Sasha. “He’s my _that_ ,” he said.

Nikolai laughed and slipped an arm around Sasha’s shoulders. “More happiness to you, then, Fyodor,” he said. “Fairy tale ending, hm? Military fame and a handsome prince.”

The snort of laughter escaped Fedya unbidden. Nikolai raised an eyebrow.

Anatole grinned, then spread his arms slightly. “Literal prince, I’m afraid.”

Sasha gave a low whistle. “Moving up in the world, Fedya. And we always said you’d come to nothing.”

“You’ll take the old cabin?” Nikolai asked, gesturing at the small house at the west of the clearing.

Fedya shrugged. “We thought so,” he said. “Don’t want to be in your way.”

“You wouldn’t be,” Sasha said. “We don’t get company here. You and your prince must come round for supper, at least.”

Fedya glanced at Anatole. The point of this trip had been to avoid people, to make things easy for a moment. Avoid judgment, and simply _be_. But no one was easier than Nikolai and Sasha. All they knew about Anatole was that he made Fedya happy, and nothing else mattered to them. So far from the cutthroat politics of the city, they didn’t give a damn what anyone thought, so long as you were safe and dry and there was food on the table. Fedya could see Anatole warming to them already. A kind of careless acceptance Anatole had certainly never felt from any of his parents’ friends.

“Tolya?” Fedya asked. “What do you think?”

Anatole grinned. “You don’t expect _me_ to catch us a pheasant for supper, do you?”

 

* * *

 

Fedya couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten so well. The pheasant had been perfect, simple and satisfying, along with roasted potatoes seasoned with herbs from last autumn’s garden. The kind of food you couldn’t get in the city, no matter how much money you spent. It satisfied him in a way beyond food, sated a sense deeper than hunger. He leaned back on the pile of skins and furs Nikolai and Sasha used for a sofa. Anatole curled up beside him, resting his head in Fedya’s lap. Absently, Fedya trailed his fingers through Anatole’s hair, treasuring the soft little sound Anatole made as Fedya’s thumb massaged behind his ear.

Fedya felt at home here, in this little well-made cabin that kept out the sting of the wind. He’d spent years trying to fit into Moscow society, dragged along to balls and parties, drinking in taverns where the vodka cost an arm and a leg. He’d adapted to Anatole’s world because that was what he did, he adapted, he had to get by somehow. But it struck him like a hammer to the chest, how wonderful it felt, to bring Anatole back to _his_ world for a change. To see how well Anatole fit there. Thoughtlessly, perfectly, like he’d been born to live here, in a small cabin with a single fire and no servants to tend it.

Sasha had pulled out a bottle of vodka twenty minutes ago, which continued to make its rounds through the small room. Anatole had taken one swallow, then passed it to Fedya and not touched the bottle again. After eight months of forced sobriety, one shot worked like six. Sasha raised an eyebrow the next time Anatole passed the bottle without drinking, which made Fedya laugh. She probably thought Anatole was a pious Christian, preaching moderation and restraint.

“It’s good to see you happy, Fedya,” Sasha said, as Nikolai lit his pipe from the fire. “You were always such a sober little child.”

“Sober? Fedya?” Anatole laughed. “I’ve known him three years, and I’ve never seen him sober a full day.”

“Three years?” Sasha said, smiling. “How did you meet, if I can ask?”

Anatole inhaled sharply. Fedya gripped Anatole’s shoulder hard, all the blood rushing to his face.

At the exact same moment, they both burst out laughing.

Ah, Jesus. It _would_ come to this. In bed one night, somewhere between Fedya’s second and third climax, they’d agreed the best part of being unable to have children was that this story would never make it into family lore. But after their reaction, both Nikolai and Sasha were watching them expectantly. There was no getting out of it now.

“Why don’t you go, Tolya,” Fedya said. “You tell it better than I do.”

Anatole sat up with a small grunt, so he could swat Fedya on the back of the head from the proper angle. “Oh, thanks much,” he snapped, and folded his legs in front of him.

“It’s that good?” Nikolai said, grinning.

Anatole sighed. “No judgment in this house,” he warned.

“It’s too cold to judge,” Sasha said.

Anatole gave a lingering filthy glance at Fedya, then shook his head in resignation. “My family’s from Petersburg,” he said. “My father has some pull there, knows the right people socially, you know—”

“Tolya’s father runs the city from his salon,” Fedya corrected.

Anatole flashed Fedya a very rude hand gesture, before continuing. “So three years ago, Fedya comes round my father’s house to visit him. See if he can talk his way into a commission for the Imperial Guard, or something else suitably murderous. The servant tells him to go into the parlor and wait, but dear Fyodor, apparently, cannot follow directions. He makes a left instead of a right, and walks in on me…”

Anatole trailed off, searching for a politic way to describe the situation.

Of course, there wasn’t one.

“I walk in on Tolya naked and handcuffed to the bed, being pleasured by a Petersburg socialite who is not at all happy to see _me_ ,” Fedya finished.

Sasha laughed; Nikolai choked on a mouthful of smoke. A wistful smile drifted across Anatole’s lips. After the initial embarrassment, he seemed to be enjoying the memory.

“I’ve never seen a woman leave a room so fast,” Fedya said to Anatole.

“She took the key with her, do you remember?” Anatole said.

Fedya scoffed and took the bottle from Sasha. “Do I remember? If I hadn’t spent ten minutes picking the lock with a hairpin, you’d still be there.”

“I was very appreciative,” Anatole said, and kissed Fedya just below the ear. “And, well. Trapped naked in bed with a dashing, handsome soldier. It wasn’t exactly my worst nightmare.”

“You should have told me you fancied men as well as women. Saved us some time.”

“Fedya, darling, I wasn’t playing hard to get _._ ”

“Honestly, I thought it would be worse, boys,” Nikolai said with a grin. Sasha glanced at him warningly—obviously knowing where this story was going. Anatole and Fedya both sat up straighter, suddenly paying attention.

“Why, you can beat that, can you?” Anatole asked, with that spark in his eyes Fedya knew all too well.

“Nikolasha,” Sasha began.

“To be sure,” Nikolai went on, undaunted. “The first time I met Sasha, we fucked in the back of a cathedral.”

Fedya laughed. Somehow that had never come up in conversation when he was a child. Anatole was watching Nikolai with his mouth half-open, visibly impressed. Fedya could see him adjusting his first impression of these simple country people.

Sasha’s embarrassment was brief, in the face of Anatole and Fedya’s obvious admiration. “We met during Pentecost service,” she said, with a conspiratorial smile. “Later, the priest said he thought a bird had gotten in.”

“No,” Anatole breathed, leaning forward. “Christ. I’ve never done that.”

Fedya glanced at Anatole sideways. “Yes, you have.”

“Not _during_ services.”

Fedya groaned and rolled his eyes. “Now you’ve done it,” he said, shoving Anatole in the shoulder. “You’ve gone and given him ideas.”

 

* * *

 

They stumbled out into the snow and across the clearing a few hours later, lit from within by fire and laughter and drink. Their own cabin was smaller than Nikolai and Sasha’s, but equally sturdy, with the same large hearth along the wall already stocked with dry wood. Fedya knelt down to coax a fire into life, while Anatole sat on the pile of furs in the corner and stretched out his legs.

“I like them,” Anatole said, prying off his boots.

“You would.” Fedya blew on the spark and watched it catch the tinder. “You like anyone who’s enchanted by you.”

“It’s not a bad reason,” Anatole said, as Fedya shrugged off his coat and came to lie beside him. “Shows they have good taste.”

The room was cold, and the weak fire took a while to make a difference. Anatole left his coat on, wrapped tight in it like a blanket. He still felt the cold more strongly than Fedya did. He shivered, until Fedya took Anatole in his arms, sharing the heat between them. It was late, past midnight, but Fedya could have stayed awake all night, and all the next day too, if only to hold Anatole like this, and hear his laugh, lingering through the cold.

As the room warmed, Anatole disentangled himself from Fedya to pull off his coat, then his waistcoat. When he lounged back, the lines of his body were clearly visible through his clothes, long and fluid like water poured from a great height. Fedya rested one hand on Anatole’s hip, gently. Ready to pull away at the slightest sign.

But Anatole did not give a sign. Instead, he caught Fedya’s eye and smiled. Moving slowly, deliberately, he straddled Fedya’s thighs, and Fedya sat up, shocked but eager. Anatole sat in Fedya’s lap, now, legs wrapped around his hips, and he nested one hand into Fedya’s hair, guided their lips together, and kissed him.

It felt like a miracle. Like proof of a god—not God, but some other one, who created a more beautiful world than the other. Anatole’s kiss was sincere, earnest. And it _lasted_. Fedya sighed into the kiss, welcomed it like a plant bending to sunlight. Anatole felt so warm against him, now, like a tiny sun beat in place of his heart, as his hands untucked Fedya’s shirt and ran upward, the length of his spine. Before the war, Anatole and Fedya had played this like a dance, switching who led and who followed based on the time, the day, the mood. Fedya was more than content to let Anatole take control. Following was easy, because Anatole led like a master. Fedya melted beneath his touch. Aching for more, aching with the sweetness of it.

“Fedya,” Anatole said quietly. His voice a breath against Fedya’s throat. “If you want to. I think I can.”

Fedya froze. He guided Anatole’s head up with one soft hand, looking at him directly. If he wanted to? The question had never been _Did he want to._ A faint flush had risen in Anatole’s face, and his eyes shone with determination and just a hint of nerves. Fedya cupped Anatole’s face in one palm—even that felt like a gift.

“I want that,” Fedya said. “But Christ, Tolya, I want _this_ , too. You don’t have to for me.”

Anatole shook his head. “I want to try,” he said firmly. “I can do it.”

Fedya hadn’t had sex since the night before Borodino, eight long months ago now. Not that he and Anatole ever said they’d be faithful to one another—few things on Earth seemed more futile than having a conversation about monogamy with Anatole Kuragin. But grief had hamstrung Fedya’s desire, and then finding anyone else had felt like sacrilege, and then these last seven weeks he’d wanted no one else. He’d handled his own needs, quietly, alone. But at Anatole’s words, eight months’ worth of desire came rushing through, almost knocking him flat. _If he wanted._ Jesus Lord on High, how badly he wanted. He bit his tongue, remembering. Mind over body, Fyodor. Come on now.

“We’ll go slow,” Fedya said. “If you change your mind, say the word and we’ll stop. I promise.”

Anatole nodded, but said nothing. He didn’t need to. His kiss was enough, was more than enough, was everything.

Fedya’s first time with Anatole had been a revolution in the bedroom. At first, he’d been ashamed to admit he had no idea what he was doing. But Anatole had no patience for embarrassment. “Have you done this before?” he’d asked. “With a man, I mean. I’m well aware you’ve fucked my sister.” And when Fedya looked down and said no, he hadn’t, Anatole kissed Fedya until the air in the room seemed to thin, then grinned and said, “Fantastic. I’ll teach you. You’re going to love this.” He’d been brilliant: acrobatic, enthusiastic, generous, endlessly attentive. Anatole guided Fedya to a depth of pleasure he’d never sounded before. And Fedya was a fast learner. Soon, he’d found he had a thing or two to teach Anatole himself.

Now, of course, things were different.

Fedya gave up all pretense of control, surrendering himself entirely to Anatole’s rhythm. They moved slower, now. A dreamlike, underwater pace. Almost chaste, in comparison to memory. Anatole was gauging his own limits at every step, and Fedya advanced only so far as he’d been given tacit permission. When Anatole unbuttoned Fedya’s shirt, it was with intoxicating slowness, like an incantation. Fedya shivered, then loosened the two buttons nearest Anatole’s collar, laying a kiss at the curve of his neck.

“All right?”

“Yes.”

Fedya eased Anatole out of his shirt, letting his kiss wander down the sharpness of Anatole’s collarbone, between his ribs, along his belly. Anatole tensed, but whispered “Yes” before Fedya could ask. He stripped out of his trousers, and Fedya quickly followed suit. Fedya hadn’t seen Anatole like this since before Borodino. A startling change, for someone who once spent at least twenty percent of his waking life naked. His bare body shone snow-pale through the night. Fedya trailed his fingers along Anatole’s back, feeling for the first time the ridge of scar tissue slicing him diagonally. Anatole had never mentioned this to him—he saved most talk of that nature for his weekly meetings with the doctor—but Fedya knew a bayonet wound when he felt one. It felt like an extra bone, like an eagle’s wing folded against his back. Anatole flinched and reached to move Fedya’s hand away.

“Not there.”

Fedya nodded. He let his hand run the length of Anatole’s thigh instead. It had been such a long time, but his mouth and his hands and his hips remembered how to pleasure Anatole on instinct. He knew Anatole’s body, better than he knew his own. Anatole’s breathing quickened, he pulled nearer, and Fedya knew he was close—catching up, Fedya had been there for minutes already.

“You, or me?” Fedya murmured, his breath along Anatole’s hip.

Anatole shivered. “You,” he said. “I can’t.”

Fedya took him at his word. Maybe he couldn’t, yet. That was all right. That was more than all right.

“I love you,” Fedya said. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

This, now, took no thought. How many dozens of times before had he done this? Familiar like his own name, his own heartbeat. Anatole twined his legs around Fedya, and Fedya forced his fingers to move and spread slowly, the animal part of his brain was urging him to _go,_  but he wouldn’t, not yet, slow and steady, and as he pulled Anatole closer and thrust into him he thought he might die of relief from it—

Anatole tensed. His whole body froze. Fedya saw his eyes widen. And then Anatole was frantic, jerky and desperate like a trapped animal, shoving Fedya away.

“Wait, stop, please don’t I can’t—”

Fedya pulled out at once. Anatole twisted, scrambling back, pale as death through the moonlight. The uneven cut of his breathing cut the sudden silence.

Fedya sat back on his heels. He still pulsed with hunger, but that was nothing, he barely even thought about it. He had no attention for anything but Anatole, whose breath came fast and shallow through the weak firelight.

Anatole drew himself into a tight ball and put his head between his knees, his hands woven tight into his hair. Bent on himself like this, each ridge of his spine rose visible down his neck and through the scar. He tried and failed to stifle a small, frustrated scream.

Fedya had tried. And there was nothing he could do to make it stop, because it was his fault, all of it, he should have known better. He had never felt so helpless, so guilty, so unworthy of being alive.

“Tolya,” Fedya said quietly. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I won’t hurt you.” He reached out a hand.

Anatole swatted it away, the movement jittery with fear. “Don’t,” he said. “Please don’t.”

“What can I—”

“Leave me be.”

Fedya locked his hands behind his back, gripping his own knuckles tight, and waited.

At first, Fedya could see every breath Anatole took. His whole body rocked faintly with it, a piece of wood adrift at sea. Another stifled scream, buried into his knees. And then, slowly, each minute agony, Fedya saw Anatole begin to come back to himself. His breathing deepened. He did not uncurl his body from its protective ball, but the wild tension unknotted slightly from his arms and back.

Finally, Anatole gave a soft groan and leaned forward, his forehead resting on his knees.

“Better?” Fedya asked quietly.

“I’m sorry,” Anatole said without looking up, his voice muffled. “I thought I could do it.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Fedya said. “I’m the one who, I should have known—”

Anatole looked up. A breath of color had returned to his face, though he still looked very pale. “I told you to,” he said. “And you listened. It’s not your fault.”

Fedya shivered. “I’ll always listen,” he said. “I promise.”

They stayed there a long moment, not speaking, not moving. Then, Fedya began to dress without a word. Anatole did the same, with shaking hands.

“Do you want me to leave?” Fedya asked. “I can stay with Nikolai and Sasha.”

“No,” Anatole said without hesitation. “I want you here. If you still want—”

“As long as you want me, I’ll be here,” Fedya said. His throat felt wrong, thick and too tight, and it was dark but not dark enough that Anatole wouldn’t notice if he started to cry, so he coughed twice and gave an unconvincing smile. “Try to get some sleep,” he said.

From the way Anatole looked at him, Fedya hadn’t been nearly good enough at hiding his emotion. He stretched out on the bearskin, hoping the movement would hide his face. After a moment, Anatole curled up on his side nearby. Not so near they were touching, but near enough that Fedya could feel the movement of his breath. Without a word, Anatole reached out and took Fedya’s hand. They held each other tight, for the hour neither of them could sleep, and then as Fedya dreamed until daybreak.

He didn’t know it, but Anatole didn’t close his eyes at all that night. He stayed awake until morning, watching, as the sunrise stretched the shadow of their clasped hands across the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and feedback, as always, are shamelessly and wildly appreciated!


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 17, in which I realize Anatole and Jean-Ralphio from Parks and Rec are the Same Person.

Fedya and Anatole only meant to stay in the country three days. Friday to Sunday, then back in the ordinary world on Monday morning. But somehow, despite their best intentions, it took a week before they could drag themselves away. Something about the air outside the city felt purer. Safer. In that respect, Anatole had been absolutely right. They needed this. A world for them, a world apart.

Not without problems, of course. After the first night, Anatole and Fedya didn’t try being intimate again. Fedya had been sick with fear, the next night, that his touch would frighten Anatole, but if it did, Anatole hid it well. Anatole curled up against Fedya, both for comfort and for warmth, and fell asleep almost at once. They stayed that way each night, as they’d done before. Chaste, but close. Neither of them spoke of the issue again. When Anatole was ready to talk, he’d talk.

Eventually, begrudgingly, they made the journey back to Moscow. Fedya tried hard not to think about the last time he and Anatole had shared a train heading in this direction. Some memories were better left unexplored. Still, as the city drew closer, Fedya couldn’t help seeing it, the way Anatole had shivered in a train compartment just like this one, his body hollow and light as a child’s, unconscious and trembling beneath a ragged coat.

Fedya believed he kept these thoughts from showing on his face.

Fedya was deeply mistaken.

Obviously sensing what Fedya was thinking, Anatole kept up a steady stream of chatter until the train reached the station. He couldn’t help smiling, listening to him talk. Anatole was so good for him. Better than he deserved. Anatole knew Fedya had the tendency to brood, and knew exactly how to talk to draw him out of his quiet, angry melancholy. At first, Fedya barely listened to what Anatole was saying. He knew he wasn’t expected to respond. Anatole wasn’t trying to hold a conversation. His meaning was simpler than that. His light, careless words boiled down to one thing: _I’m alive, I’m awake, it’s not like before._ That was all Fedya wanted to hear.

“And the priest looked me dead in the eye and asked if I even _knew_ the difference between a toilet and the baptismal font—” Anatole continued.

Fedya’s double-take was so sharp it hurt his neck. Suddenly, he was paying attention.

“Wait,” he said. “Start again.”

Anatole threw back his head and laughed. “Lena’s right,” he said. “You really _don’t_ listen.”

An hour later, they stepped off the train into the street. After the peace of the country, the city almost felt stifling. Too many people, too many buildings, not enough air. Fedya leaned his shoulder against Anatole’s, a soft reassuring nudge, and set off walking in the direction of his flat. They might have taken a carriage home from the station and shut out the world that way, but somehow to Fedya that felt like giving up. Best to keep the sky above their heads for as long as they could.

He glanced back over his shoulder. Anatole was following, but several steps behind. He’d tucked his hands into his pockets, and something close to discomfort showed on his face. Fedya paused, then doubled back to stand beside him. He laid a hand on the small of Anatole’s back and guided him forward, walking side by side.

“What’s the matter?”

Anatole took a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking,” he began.

“Dangerous pastime, for you.”

Anatole scowled, but in a moment his serious manner was back. “When you want me to move out, you’ll tell me, won’t you?” he said.

Fedya blinked. Of course he’d say when he wanted Anatole to leave. Just like he’d say when he wanted to stop breathing, or for the sun to burn out. “Tolya, what are you talking about?”

“I took over your life,” Anatole said, looking now at the snowy street. “I didn’t mean to, but, well, it doesn’t matter what I meant. So when you want your own space again, I’ll go. I’m all right now. It’s no trouble.”

Leave and go where, Fedya wondered. For nearly a year now, Anatole had, technically, been homeless. Thrown out of his father’s house in Petersburg, he’d lain temporary claim to a guest bedroom at Hélène and Pierre’s—an arrangement he could hardly return to now without scandal, not with how much time Natasha spent there. Then, after he’d been banished from Moscow, he’d bounced from one friend to another in Petersburg. And then, the war. Anatole hadn’t stayed in one place for more than a few months in ages. Fedya wondered how long Anatole had been silently waiting for the other shoe to drop, for his welcome to run out, to find himself alone and searching once again.

Fedya stopped walking, there in the middle of the street, and to hell with the crowd of people now forced to part around them. Anatole looked up, finally. His eyes shone with surprise, but Fedya’s were steady.

“Do you know what I want?” Fedya said.

Anatole shook his head without saying a word.

“I want for us both to go to Lena’s and get the rest of your things, so you can move in with me properly,” he said. “If you want that.”

Anatole stared. “You don’t have to,” he said.

Fedya shook his head. “I want to. Is that so hard to believe?”

Anatole laughed, once, quietly. “Yes,” he said. “I’m…I’m trouble, now. I’m work. And there’s no need to be a self-sacrificing martyr about it, Fedya, honestly, if you’re tired of it—”

Fedya took Anatole firmly by both shoulders. “You’re not work,” he said. “I love you, and I want you with me always. This isn’t martyrdom, Tolya,” he added, with a grin. “This is greed. I’m a selfish son of a bitch, and I don’t want to share you with other people.”

Anatole bit his lip, but the corner of his mouth still managed to inch into a smile. Even after his countless lovers and liaisons, the overblown declarations of passion he’d no doubt heard from thirty different men and women, he flushed slightly at Fedya’s words. As if he actually believed them this time.

“So what do you think?” Fedya asked.

Within two days, Anatole had fully moved his life into Fedya’s flat. The little room, for the first time, began to feel like a home.

 

* * *

 

A few days after their return, Anatole and Fedya slept together in bed, in the flat they could now call _theirs._ Fedya had sprawled out on his back, having moved in his sleep to take at least two-thirds of the space. Anatole lay on his side at the edge of the mattress, in the sliver of space Fedya had left him. He was cocooned in the blankets that Fedya had shoved off sometime between midnight and two. Fedya’s knee lightly brushed the small of Anatole’s back.

Anatole slept deeply, and dreamed of nothing.

Fedya twitched, his lips moving as if to speak, and was not so lucky.

 

* * *

 

The ash. The old ash tree on the southernmost tip of camp. That was where they’d agreed to meet, after the smoke cleared at Borodino. First thing. So they would know. So they could be certain.

Fedya paced in front of the tree, tearing the damp sod beneath his feet to mud. The moon hung high overhead, washing out the weary camp. Nearly midnight, now, or later. And still he hadn’t come.

Anger swelled in Fedya’s chest, with a rolling nausea he refused to identify as fear. How dare he, the self-absorbed idiot. Probably preening back in his tent, and couldn’t be bothered. Fedya was lying to himself. It wasn’t even a good lie. Anatole was a fool, but he wasn’t cruel. He knew what his absence would do to Fedya. He wouldn’t forget to come. He knew this mattered.

Twenty minutes passed. Then thirty. An hour. Fedya’s legs ached. He hadn’t eaten since that morning, and his whole body felt hollow.

Anatole would come. He had to.

“Dolokhov.”

Fedya whirled, death in his eyes. That hadn’t been Anatole’s voice, and he didn’t want anyone else to speak to him. Hang the rest of the world, until he saw Anatole safe, standing tall, alive.

Denisov drew back, seeing Fedya’s rage shoot like flame. He raised both hands, perhaps afraid Fedya would shoot. In Denisov’s handsome eyes, Fedya saw nothing but concern. His friend’s uniform was splattered with mud, and streaks of blood and dirt smeared across his brow. Fedya had little doubt he looked the same. War marked you, one way or another.

Denisov didn’t deserve his anger. It took a profound effort of will for Fedya to realize that. He swallowed hard. When he spoke, his words came out coiled like a snake.

“What is it, Vaska?”

Denisov hesitated. “I’m worried about you,” he said. “Come rest.”

“Can’t.”

“What’s the matter?”

What was the matter? Five minutes, even ten minutes he could forgive, but Fedya had been standing here for an hour and a quarter, alone. _The ash,_ he’d said, when Anatole had come to him the night before, after their first kiss but before Fedya had muffled a moan in the crook of Anatole’s elbow. _As soon as it’s over. I’ll meet you there. So you’ll know I’m safe. And so I’ll know you are._ Anatole had promised.

“I’m waiting for someone,” he said curtly.

Denisov bit his lip. Fedya knew what he was thinking—this is war, Dolokhov, we lost forty thousand men today, if you’ve been waiting long, you know what that means. Fedya didn’t want to hear it, but Denisov said it anyway.

“The lists of the dead are coming back, Fedya.”

“He’s not dead.”

Denisov nodded. “Tell me who it is.”

This was madness. There was no reason to speak about the dead. Death was something that happened to other people. Anatole was late, delayed, roped into helping tend wounded soldiers, or in the infirmary, resting, recovering already. Fedya would give Anatole hell for this, when he finally showed up, for this needless worry.

“He’s not dead,” Fedya said again. “He’s coming.”

“All right,” said Denisov. “What’s his name, this not-dead man who’s coming?”

“Corporal Anatole Kuragin,” Fedya said.

Denisov looked down at the mud splattering his boots, sopping wet from the newly torn ground. Fedya’s body flashed cold. Already, he could feel his hands shaking. Denisov needed to look at him. This would be all right. But it wouldn’t, not until Denisov lifted his eyes from the ground and fucking _looked at him._

“Vaska—”

“Kuragin was in my squadron, Dolokhov,” Denisov said quietly. “He didn’t return.”

It seemed to Fedya like Denisov was speaking in tongues.

“Didn’t—”

“I’ve had my men search the camp,” Denisov continued, as if speaking over Fedya’s stunned silence would make this better. “I…Dolokhov, listen. He’s not on the lists of the dead, but those lists aren’t, the shelling, some bodies were burned beyond—”

“No.”

He wouldn’t hear of this. Anatole, handsome Anatole, vain enchanting careless perfect Anatole, reduced to a pile of burned hair and charred bones in a ditch, no, that was mad, that wasn’t possible. Fedya had clutched both hands in his hair without realizing he’d done it, his voice was still speaking without his permission, that same word over and over, _no, no, he isn’t, he wasn’t, no._ Death was something that happened to other people. Death was—

“I’m sorry,” Denisov said.

Fedya couldn’t scream. He opened his mouth to nothing but whistling air. It wasn’t possible. His chest felt ripped open, ribs gaping like a broken door. He sank to the ground, never mind the mud, kneeling there in front of the tree. Brittle and dying, but fully tall enough to hang a man from, if Anatole was dead. Why live. What did any of it matter, anymore, if it was true.

“Dolokhov,” Denisov said. He bent down to lay one hand on Fedya’s shoulder, but Fedya shrugged him roughly off.

“I’ll kill them, Vaska,” Fedya said, his voice too high, too fast. “I’ll kill them all, every man, woman, and child. Slowly. I want them to suffer.”

“Fedya, I understand, I’ve lost—” Denisov began.

“You don’t,” Fedya snarled. “You haven’t.”

No one could understand. No one had lost this much. Fedya was twenty-six years old, and for twenty-four of those years, he’d lived like a man deranged. He’d taken the boldest, most daring military missions he could find on the hope that he’d either win glory or be killed, make his life worth living or finally put a stop to the emptiness. He’d drank endlessly, smoked constantly, fought with strangers, cheated friends out of thousands of rubles for the pleasure of seeing the fear in their eyes, of knowing he’d bent their will to his, of knowing that someone in the world finally had less than he did. He’d had nothing. No one. Then for two brief, shining, warm, impossible years, he’d had Anatole. He’d had someone to live for, someone who knew him, saw him, held him, loved him. And now—

“You don’t understand,” Fedya said. “Go away.”

Denisov held his breath. Looking warily at the pistol in Fedya’s belt. Loaded. Didn’t take much aim to make the shot with the barrel in your mouth. “Dolokhov,” he began.

“I said _go._ ”

There was no arguing with Fedya in that tone of voice. Denisov left, though not without a backward glance. Only when he had gone did Fedya find the breath to scream, and kept screaming, breath escaping him in a haze and he couldn’t _stop_ —

Fedya jerked awake with a shout. His body lashed out, pushing the blankets aside in a wild, panicked flail. Anatole, already on the edge of the mattress and caught in the wake of Fedya’s right leg, was shoved ungracefully from the bed. He fell from the mattress to the floor with a small, surprised _oof,_ landing heavily on his back. Half the blankets went with him, waterfalling from the bed toward the floorboards. Fedya sat upright, breathing hard. His whole body shook.

From the floor, Anatole sat up, rubbing the back of his head. The tangle of blankets around his legs was hopeless. Working his way free, he stood, his tall silhouette slicing out a sliver of moonlight. His eyelids were heavy still with sleep, but when he spoke, his voice was soft.

“Fedya?”

Fedya said nothing. His breathing was still too jagged for speech. He pressed one hand to his chest, as if keeping his heart inside him.

“Dreams again?” Anatole asked.

Fedya nodded.

“It’s been a while,” Anatole said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I thought they might be finished.”

Anatole was half-right. It was a dream, just not the one he thought. Between tours, home on leave, Fedya had woken Anatole often in the middle of the night, scaring him half to death with a scream or kicking him hard in the thigh. Once, a particularly bad nightmare, Fedya had struck out in his sleep and punched Anatole square in the face. Even though Anatole had brushed off his stammered, ashamed apologies with a laugh—“It’s nothing, Fedya, and it’s hardly the first time”—that black eye had watched Fedya quietly for a week, its judgment souring as the bruise turned green.

Those dreams had been about the war. Harsh, vivid, hellish dreams. He used to dream of his bayonet, the way its movement would slow as it sliced through flesh and muscle. Of the scent of bodies, putrefying flesh rotting in the mouths of birds. Of the soldier with both legs blasted off at the hips, who had looked Fedya straight in the eye as he died, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth, from the corner of his eye.

Back then, after he woke with a shout, he used to ask Anatole to leave. Just for a few minutes, until his pounding heart slowed and he felt like himself again. It had humiliated Fedya, to have Anatole see him that way. Shaking. Terrified. Pillow wet with tears. Fyodor Dolokhov was a killer, a gambler, a warrior. Invulnerable. He wasn’t afraid of anything. He couldn’t have _nightmares._ At least not in front of people.

Fedya hadn’t had one of those dreams in months.

This dream was different. But Anatole didn’t need to know that.

“Do you want me to go?” Anatole asked. Still sitting hesitant on the edge of the bed, halfway between staying and going.

Fedya’s laugh was more of a sob. “For fuck’s sake, come here.”

Anatole slid back into bed and put his arms around Fedya. Fedya held him back, closer and tighter than he’d ever held anyone. Breathing deep, the scent of Anatole’s skin, soap and sweat and the hint of sandalwood from the cologne he’d taken to wearing again, not long ago. Fedya wasn’t sure if he was trembling or Anatole was. It was hard to tell where Fedya’s body ended and Anatole’s began.

“It’s all right,” Anatole murmured. Slowly, he stroked one hand through Fedya’s hair, his long fingers cold in the drafty apartment but still so tender, so real. “It’s all right. I’m here.”

How Anatole knew exactly the right thing to say was a miracle.

It had all been a lie. They’d been wrong. He was here.

But God, it had felt so real, for so long.

Melted flesh and burned bones in a ditch.

 _Here._ Alive.

Fedya felt himself crumble, and he wept into Anatole’s shoulder.

“I know,” he heard Anatole say, over and over. Pointless words, but not pointless. He knew Fedya needed to hear his voice. “I know, I know.”

So many weeks and months Fedya had taken care of Anatole. He’d forgotten, somehow, that he might need to be taken care of too. And he’d forgotten how good Anatole was at holding him this way, at saying nothing but what needed to be said, at letting him cry and never holding it against him, never judging, because everyone cried, from the fiercest man to the smallest child, it meant you were alive. Anatole had always known that. He’d never been afraid of his own emotions. He let them flow freely in a way Fedya had never learned. He always, somehow, knew how to feel, what to say.

Fedya sniffed loudly, as ungraceful a sound as he could imagine. He looked at Anatole almost sheepishly. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Anatole laughed and kissed Fedya on the cheek, his lips wet with Fedya’s tears. “If we’re apologizing for bad dreams now, love,” he said, “I have some ground to make up.”

“I shouldn’t have—”

“But you can,” Anatole said firmly.

He pulled back slightly and folded his legs in front of him, leaning forward to rest his hands on his knees. It was a familiar posture, one he adopted when he wanted to say something serious, and make sure Fedya would listen.

“I know I’m not…my head isn’t right yet,” Anatole said—and raised a hand, before Fedya could interrupt and say _you’re always right, you’re perfect, don’t talk that way_. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t help you. I can. Don’t be afraid of me, _mon cher,_ I’ll be all right.”

He hadn’t even noticed, Fedya thought, when the French term of endearment slipped off his tongue. It had been thoughtless, instinctive. The kind of thing he’d said a thousand times without concern. As if nothing had changed.

Everything had, of course. But it was beautiful, in those words, to believe otherwise.

Fedya smiled and kissed Anatole, for comfort and in thanks. To remind himself, with every sense in his body, that memories were not reality, that Anatole was alive, in his arms, _here._

“I’m sorry I woke you,” Fedya said, and wiped his eyes roughly with the back of his hand. “Go back to sleep.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let Fedya Dolokhov have feelings 2KAlways.
> 
> Feedback is life, bless your beautiful hearts for leaving it!


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some discussion of suicide and some faintly NSFW escapades. (Not that I expect many of you are reading this in the company conference room, but fair warning if you are.)

Three weeks later, winter had begun to loosen its grip. Spring hadn’t broken yet, and ice still drifted in the Moskva River, tinkling like windchimes with the ripple of wavelets. But a breath of something milder lurked in the air. It stayed lighter later now—past two in the afternoon, which felt like a miracle after months of darkness.

There were a hundred things Fedya would have liked to do with those extra hours of daylight. Attending a dinner party at Hélène and Pierre’s to celebrate Natasha Rostova’s name-day, though, was not one of those things.

But while it would have been easier to decline the invitation, Fedya didn’t have much of a choice. Hélène had all but begged him and Anatole to come. Pierre had decided to host the party, and Hélène couldn’t refuse to attend a dinner in her own home without making a scene. But that didn’t mean she wanted to sit through a night with her husband and his lover without someone on her side. Anatole had agreed at once, without hesitation. Fedya had agreed somewhat more slowly.

Fedya hated dinners like this. Hated them fiercely. And after the disaster of Anatole’s failed elopement, he didn’t particularly want to spend an evening sitting next to Natasha, seething with quiet jealousy and insecurity.

He’d live, though. He’d survived worse.

They arrived at Pierre and Hélène’s almost half an hour late. Anatole had taken ages to get ready, which Fedya had found irritating and endearing in equal measure. Still, Anatole’s efforts had been worth it. In newly tailored trousers, a deep blue shirt, and a narrow crimson waistcoat, he looked as flashy and confident as ever, as if daring people to look at him. Which Fedya did. At length.

When Anatole rang the bell, Fedya expected a servant to come and escort them into the house. He hadn’t expected Natasha to come herself. She looked radiant, dressed in a soft pink gown that showcased her shoulders. Her smile broadened at the sight of them.

“Tolya,” she said, and kissed him on both cheeks. “So good of you to come.”

“I wouldn’t miss it, Natalie,” Anatole said, and kissed her warmly on the lips.

Fedya shot him a poisonous glance. Really, did he even know how they looked?

As if sharing the thought, Natasha turned from Anatole to give Fedya a warm smile of his own. It was an entrancing smile, he thought. Impossibly sincere. You couldn’t help but feel special, when someone smiled at you like that.

“Fyodor,” she said. “I know we don’t know each other terribly well, but Anatole cares so much for you, so I feel as if we’re already the best of friends.” Her smile took on a note of shyness, and she darted a quick glance down at her shoes. “I do hope we will be, soon.”

Fedya didn’t want to like her. This girl who’d caused Anatole and himself so much pain the year before, and was causing Hélène so much pain right this minute. This girl who’d almost taken Anatole from him. This stupid, shallow, frivolous girl, part of a society he had no desire to belong to. He had no intention of liking her at all.

Fedya bowed and pressed an elegant kiss to the back of Natasha’s hand. “Truly, Countess,” he said, standing straight again, and smiled. “I think of us as friends already.”

She beamed and embraced him tightly, before pulling back with a brilliant light in her eyes. “I knew you’d be a dear, Fyodor,” she said. “But where are my manners? Come in. You’re the last ones here, but we’ve saved you places.”

Natasha stepped aside, leading the way to the dining room. Anatole and Fedya walked side by side behind her. The smirk on Anatole’s face was insufferable.

“Well, of course she _knew_ you’d be a dear, Fyodor,” he murmured in Fedya’s ear.

Fedya kept his eyes dead ahead. “Shut up, Anatole.”

“‘I think of us as friends already,’” Anatole teased, in a terrible impression of Fedya’s voice. “Should I worry you intend to switch teams and run off with—”

“You have a lot of _nerve_ , to make that particular joke.”

Anatole shut up at last, though the smirk became even broader.

As they entered the dining room, Fedya realized that this dinner would be an intimate one. He should have known, he supposed. Natasha’s social circle was still somewhat reduced. Partly from the scandal of her failed elopement, partly because there were fewer young people in Moscow after the war. Other than Anatole and Fedya, only a few other people had been invited. Hélène, who winked at both of them as they entered the room. Natasha’s cousin Sonya, who seemed terrified of making eye contact with Anatole. Her brother Nikolai, who had grown into a handsome young man—handsome enough that Fedya almost felt guilty for fleecing him at dice several years back. Marya Dmitrievna, who glared so fiercely at Anatole that he turned a brilliant shade of scarlet and quickly took his seat beside Fedya.

And, of course, Pierre.

From the far end of the table, Pierre shot Anatole and Fedya a glance that could have killed twenty men. His anger might, Fedya mused, have come from many sources. Their relationship, which was a sin according to whatever religious conviction he held that week. Anatole’s new friendship with Natasha, which Pierre’s pride and jealousy couldn’t bear. Or the fact that both Fedya and Anatole had slept with Pierre’s wife.

Calling the dinner _tense_ was an understatement.

If Fedya hadn’t known Anatole as well as he did, he wouldn’t have suspected Anatole was nervous. Nothing in his manner betrayed it. He laughed, smiled, traded witty remarks and polite compliments with Nikolai and Sonya until even the hawkish Marya Dmitrievna seemed to relax in his presence. It was the most impressive social performance Fedya had ever seen. And all the while, Anatole’s left hand toyed anxiously with the hem of his waistcoat, rolling and unrolling the fabric. His leg, too, trembled like a leaf. Anxiety had strung his nerves tight as a violin. No one but Fedya could tell.

Without speaking, Fedya reached over and rested one hand on Anatole’s thigh. The shaking didn’t stop, but it slowed.

“I’m so glad you were able to spend your name-day with us, Natasha,” Hélène said. “It’s lovely to spend more time with you.”

Her smile was every inch as convincing as Anatole’s confidence, and every inch as contrived. Say what you would about how Vasily Kuragin had raised his children—and Fedya, given the opportunity, would say plenty about it—but he’d created two of the best liars in Russia.

Natasha blushed, entirely missing the falseness of the smile. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” she said. “Mama and Papa are back in the country, but it’s such a relief to be among friends. I wasn’t sure I’d see some of you again.”

“Tasha,” Nikolai said, his smile warm but warning. “There’s no need to talk of that now—”

“Why not?” Natasha said. Her voice shook slightly—clearly this wasn’t the first time she’d had this argument with her brother. “Why don’t we talk of it? Why pretend it didn’t happen? For months, I didn’t know what would happen to you, Nicki. Or to Fyodor, or Tolya. You might have been killed, or hurt, or captured, or…”

“There are worse fates, Natasha,” Pierre interrupted.

Fedya whipped his head round. Pierre’s wineglass was empty—Fedya knew it wasn’t his first drink, and doubted it was his second. A faint flush colored his face, but that was nothing compared with the hate that had risen in his eyes when Natasha said _Tolya,_ a diminutive, a pet name for the man she had once loved. Had almost married. Would have married, if she could have gotten away with it. Natasha had expressed concern for Anatole, when Pierre had been at Borodino too, amid the smoke and the blood, even if he’d only gone as a spectator. Jealousy sat ugly in Pierre. It tugged his mouth into a cold smile, cruel and soaked in drink.

“What do you mean, Petrushka?” Natasha asked, innocently confused.

“I hear the French were kind to their prisoners,” Pierre said, looking dead at Anatole. “Affectionate, even. Being captured could be quite pleasurable, for a certain type of man.”

Fedya flinched.

“ _Pyotr Kirillovich_ —” Hélène snarled.

Anatole shoved his chair back and stood up.

The entire room fell silent and stared at him. Anatole had gone very pale, and his hands were shaking, but his face had been wiped clean of all emotion. It was like looking at a statue, or a ghost.

“Tolya,” Natasha began, but Anatole cut her off.

“I need some air,” he said.

Without waiting for her to respond, Anatole turned and stalked out of the dining room. The silence in his wake hung like a shroud.

That did it. Fedya hadn’t killed a man since the war, but he remembered how the thing was done. His pistol was still at his flat across town, but that wasn’t a problem. He could kill Pierre with the salt cellar. A butter knife. It might even be better that way. More painful. Slower.

Hélène gave Fedya a sharp look. Fedya placed his knife back on the table and raised his eyebrows at her.

_You, or me?_ he asked, without speaking.

She nodded toward him. _You_.

Hélène was probably right. Both Fedya and Hélène possessed the capability to talk Anatole down from this. But only Hélène could make Pierre feel like a piece of shit ground beneath a carriage wheel without causing a scene. Left to handle the situation in the dining room, Fedya would probably challenge Pierre to a duel, which, though effective, was hardly the most tactful way to end an evening. And besides, Fedya’s track record of dueling Pierre was not exceptional.

Fedya stood up and gave the room a curt, mechanical bow. “Excuse me,” he said shortly. Then he bolted from the room after Anatole.

Anatole hadn’t gotten far. Fedya heard the unmistakable sound of his feet against the stairs. Pushing past Pierre’s housekeeper, he took the steps two at a time and spotted Anatole halfway down the hall. Shoulders tense, fists tight. Fedya knew Anatole well enough to suspect, even from behind, that he was crying. Fedya jogged the few steps to catch up and placed one hand on Anatole’s shoulder.

“Go to hell, Pierre,” Anatole snarled. He spun to slap Fedya’s hand away. Fedya had been wrong—Anatole wasn’t crying. His blue eyes blazed cold, sharp with anger.

The anger eased, but didn’t disappear, when he saw it was Fedya who had followed him.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Fedya said. “Can I stay?”

Anatole exhaled and raked his fingers back through his hair. His hand, Fedya saw, shook. Fedya couldn’t help remembering a bone-thin Anatole sitting up in bed, cold and starved, holding his hand in front of him and watching it tremble. There was a difference, he thought, between healing and being healed.

“All right,” Anatole said.

“Good,” Fedya said. “I was going to anyway.”

Anatole snorted and turned away. “Well, come on, then,” he said, and continued down the hall. After a bewildered moment, Fedya followed. He hadn’t thought Anatole had a _destination._ He’d thought not being in Pierre’s company was enough.

Anatole walked the house with confidence, taking Fedya around two corners and up another flight of stairs. For a wild moment, Fedya thought Anatole was leading him to Pierre and Hélène’s bedroom—the only room on this level of the house Fedya knew from experience. Given what Pierre had said, Fedya wouldn’t put it past Anatole to piss in Pierre’s sheets for revenge. But no, Anatole passed the door, not stopping until he reached the window at the end of the hall. With a small grunt of effort, he opened it, letting the air outside chill the house. Then, to Fedya’s alarm, he stepped one leg neatly out the window and onto the ledge below.

“What in hell are you—”

But it was too late. Like the best-dressed cat burglar in Russia, Anatole darted fully out the window, reached up, and hoisted himself onto the roof.

“Come on,” came his voice through the open window. “Trust me.”

“Christ, what do you think I am, part of the Moscow Circus?”

“I’ll help you.”

Fedya swore, then gingerly imitated Anatole’s movements. He balanced on the small ledge beneath the window, though not without a wave of nausea at the feeling of void behind him. Anatole’s hands reached down, pulling him safely up the rest of the way.

They stood now on the roof of Hélène and Pierre’s home. A large, flat space, punctuated by brick chimneys every few feet like a truncated forest. The roof was ringed by a ledge, a foot high and about as wide. A thin crust of snow still clung to the brick, though the air had warmed enough so Fedya could no longer see his own breath. Anatole was looking toward the west, his hands in his back pockets, elbows out.

“Look,” he said.

Fedya did. The whole of Moscow glittered before him. Though it wasn’t terribly late, the sun skimmed the western horizon already. Rose-gold light gilded the buildings, shining sacred as far as they could see. Moscow looked like a jeweled replica, a toy trapped in glass. It was beautiful, even for someone like Fedya, who had better things to do than think about the beauty of cityscapes.

“I used to come up here last year,” Anatole said, nodding toward the view. “When I was staying with Lena, and needed to get away from that insufferable old bear before I stabbed him in the throat. It happened more often than you’d expect.”

“Tolya,” Fedya began, warning.

He could sense something in the way Anatole was talking. In the way he’d started to wander back toward the edge of the roof.

In the way he’d stopped listening.

“No, all right,” Anatole said, “maybe you’d expect it.”

In one elegant step, Anatole climbed up onto the ledge, overlooking the city.

Fedya’s heart stopped.

Anatole was going to jump.

Anatole was going to jump, and he was going to kill himself, and Fedya was going to have to stand here and watch.

Anatole stood without wavering. His feet seemed perfectly steady on the bricks. But the position was precarious enough that a breath of wind could knock him to his death. His shoulders looked so narrow, in that sleek crimson waistcoat. Too fragile to be so high up, and so alone. He looked elegant there, like a dancer. He looked exposed, like a target. He looked very, very young.

Fedya was too afraid to move. Too afraid to think. If he startled Anatole, if he frightened him or angered him, it would all be over. He’d jump, and Fedya would have killed him, Fedya and Pierre together.

“Tolya, Jesus, don’t—”

“I’m not,” Anatole said, without looking. “Don’t talk nonsense.”

Fedya bit his tongue, then took a shaky step nearer. The ledge was wider than it looked. Though Anatole stood an inch from the edge, he looked to be in no danger of falling. Nonetheless, Fedya’s mind circled on the drop, three stories to the street. This was a spectacular moment to discover he was afraid of heights. A body would shatter, falling that far.

Anatole had his hands in his back pockets again, elbows casually out. Through the triangle between Anatole’s arm and his side, Fedya could see the city skyline, the full distance a man could fall.

“I’ve thought about it, though,” Anatole said, conversationally. “How I’d do it. Not jumping, that’s for people who don’t plan. You can’t get high enough to be certain.”

“Anatole, don’t talk like that—”

“I’d have done it in your flat,” Anatole interrupted. “That’s what I decided. If the day came when I couldn’t bear it. I even know where you keep the gun.”

“It isn’t loaded,” Fedya said softly.

Anatole’s laugh sounded like a bark. “I know how to load a gun, Fedya.”

Fedya couldn’t stop staring at him. Like the figurehead of a ship, poised on the edge of who knew what. His boots along the narrow ledge, less than a foot wide. The cocked triangles of his arms, like wings, like a man about to fly.

“Tolya,” Fedya said. “Come away from the edge.”

Anatole turned to face Fedya. The calm in his face was worse than anger or fear would have been. The three-story drop licked the heels of his boots.

“I’m not going to jump, I said.”

“And I believe you,” Fedya said. “But come down from there.”

Anatole sighed, then hopped neatly back down onto the flat roof. Fedya felt the vise around his heart suddenly expand. His knees were shaking. It felt, for one long risky moment, as if he might throw up. He sat with his back against the nearest chimney, gaining strength from the stable brick and mortar. A few breaths, and the nausea passed, though the sparks tingling in his legs would linger for minutes after. Anatole sat beside him, close enough that their shoulders touched.

“I’m tired, Fedya,” Anatole said, and leaned his head against Fedya’s shoulder.

“I know.”

“Of how people like Pierre look at me,” Anatole said, as if Fedya hadn’t spoken. “Of it always being there, inside me. Part of me. I want to cut it out of my head.”

Fedya bit his lip and said nothing.

He knew what he had to say. Anatole needed to hear this. Besides, it was the only thing Fedya could think of to say. But Fedya had never told anyone this before. He’d been afraid of what Anatole would think, of how he’d see Fedya differently, after it was in the open between them.

He didn’t want to tell this story. But it was the only one he had that could help. Now wasn’t the time to start worrying about his own feelings.

“Did you know,” Fedya said finally, slowly, “that I used to think about it too?”

Anatole sat up straight and looked at Fedya. His eyes glittered like ice, beautiful and cold and sharp. Fedya had never been so afraid to see judgment in another person’s eyes. He looked down at his knees and took a long breath. It hurt to remember, after years of trying to forget.

“Once,” Fedya said, “I tried to go through with it. After my first tour.” He closed his eyes, forcing himself to keep speaking. “The nightmares, the memories, the emptiness, I couldn’t stand it. Two in the morning, I stood in the middle of a bridge over the Neva, and I closed my eyes and got ready to jump. Do you know why I didn’t do it?”

“Why?” Anatole said quietly.

Fedya opened his eyes and turned to look at Anatole.

“Because of you, you beautiful idiot.”

The ice melted immediately from Anatole’s eyes. His lips parted slightly, but no words came out. Instead, he wrapped an arm around Fedya, and Fedya leaned his head against Anatole’s shoulder. The rose-glittering rooftops of Moscow looked out over them, listening as Fedya spoke.

“I couldn’t stand the idea that I’d never see you again. Never hold you again. Tease you. Hear you laugh. Bail you out of jail.”

Anatole shoved Fedya’s shoulder indignantly, though his eyes were shimmering. “You can’t let that go, eh? One time, that happened.”

“Twice.”

“It most certainly was not twi—”

“You’re forgetting the night with the peacock and the chief of police.”

Anatole blushed slightly and closed his mouth again without speaking.

Fedya laughed and kissed Anatole on the cheek. “Back then, I thought you could never love me,” he said. “But still, I didn’t want to lose you. Not ever.”

“You’ll never lose me,” Anatole said. “I promise.”

Fedya hadn’t really thought about it before. The fact that neither of them would be sitting on this roof, watching winter turn to spring, without the other. They’d saved each other’s lives, repeatedly, every day. Fedya should have told Anatole this. Thanked him for it. But feeling the way Anatole’s hand held him, the way the beating of their hearts seemed to sync in time, words felt useless. Anatole knew already.

“I can’t even thank you,” Anatole said, looking out over the roof. “For everything you did to help me. I don’t know if I’ll ever be myself. Like before, I mean.”

He sounded so nervous, so apologetic, that Fedya wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Of course Anatole wouldn’t be the same. God knew Fedya wasn’t. After a war, nothing ever was. Men dead, men broken, women tormented, children orphaned, cities burned, countries shattered. How could anything be the same, after that? How could either of them be the same, after what they’d seen? But Fedya didn’t want Anatole as an unchanging picture. The handsome careless aristocrat, two-dimensional and flawless, uncomplicated.

He didn’t want a picture. He wanted the man.

He wanted _Anatole_ , and everything that came with him. To hold, and tease, and goad, and sigh loudly in the general direction of, and love, no matter how much it hurt.

Fedya smiled and brushed his lips against the scar ridging Anatole’s cheek. Part of him, now, that imperfection, that pain. Another part he could love.

“You’re already yourself,” he said. “You’ll always be yourself.”

“I love you,” Anatole said, before Fedya could say it.

Fedya smiled. “I love you more, and you know it.”

“Lies and nonsense,” Anatole murmured, and kissed him.

Boldly, easily, as if no other thought crossed his mind but this.

Anatole had grown more confident since their time in the country. They hadn’t tried making love again, but his kisses had seemed to halt less, and his hands had grown more adventurous. One night a week ago, as Fedya collapsed back into bed, sweating and sated and breathless from the full power of Anatole’s elegant, capable hands, he’d wondered what he did, in the eyes of God, to deserve pleasure that total. Fedya had asked him over and over, _are you sure, do you want this, we can stop,_ but he’d never been certain which answer Anatole would give, yes or no.

Now, though, Anatole’s kiss felt comfortable. Confident. Hungry. This was the kind of kiss that led to things.

And lead it did.

When Anatole began to loosen the buttons of Fedya’s shirt, time seemed to speed up and slow down at once. Every buttonhole took a hundred years, and then Fedya was shirtless, and Anatole’s mouth nipped at Fedya’s breastbone, his belly, worried at his nipple—

Fedya whimpered, his back arching with the thrilling graze of Anatole’s teeth. “Tolya, shit, don’t tease, I can’t—”

Anatole’s face was flushed, and he was smiling. He locked eyes with Fedya, and it was like nothing else in the world existed. They weren’t on a rooftop in central Moscow, they weren’t in Russia at all. They were in a space beyond, without, apart.

“I want you,” Anatole said.

Fedya swallowed a groan, rough in the back of his throat. “Are you sure?” he asked, though God, if Anatole said no, Fedya would have to be excused immediately to get himself off, right here on the roof, he couldn’t bear this—

Anatole’s smile broadened. And there it was. That smile. The old one. Brash, reckless, daring, arrogant, confident in the irresistible magnetism of his own charm. Familiar. The Anatole Fedya had fallen in love with had smiled like this.

Fedya shuddered. He’d hungered for that smile for a _year._

“I’m sure,” Anatole whispered. His breath was hot against Fedya’s throat. “I want you to take me right here, right now, on this roof. I want—”

The rest of the sentence was muffled, as Fedya nested his hand in Anatole’s hair and pulled him into a kiss that tasted like starlight.

Fedya felt Anatole’s confidence rolling from him in waves. The old Anatole. The one who had lived for this, thrilled in the notion of pleasure, his own and others. Acrobatic and generous and confident and shameless and _free._ In a minute, Fedya was naked, and Anatole was too, and Fedya’s lips caressed his hipbone, the flat shelf of his belly, the inside of his thigh. Gently, Fedya slipped a single finger into Anatole, letting his mouth do the rest of the work. Anatole shuddered, a small wail that almost sounded afraid. Fedya stopped at once, glancing nervously up.

“Is that all right?”

Anatole’s face was flushed, his eyes wide open and incredulous. “ _Fuck_ , yes, Fedya, don’t stop _—_ ”

Fedya laughed and got back to business. Anatole let out a filthy sound and gasped something that sounded like “ _hurry up._ ”

When Fedya entered him, Anatole laughed.

The laugh was loud and clear and shimmering, rising visible on a cloud of breath. Like fresh snow, it glittered between them.

Fedya couldn’t stop smiling. The rush built within him, and Anatole pulled him closer, deeper, welcoming him in. A tangle of limbs and sweat and Anatole’s laugh, and their naked bodies brushed with the sunset in pink and gold.

When Anatole came, it was with a single word, head thrown back, ecstatic, breathless, triumphant.

“ _Fedya_ —”

Fedya came a beat later, like thunder after the lightning.

Life had never seemed so beautiful.

He pulled out laughing and hugged Anatole to him. Drained. Elated.

They collapsed back beside one another, backs flat against the roof. Fedya took Anatole in his arms, who gave a soft _hmm_ and settled in closer. Fedya could feel Anatole’s smile against his shoulder. Anatole’s narrow chest was slick with sweat, rising visibly, panting but not with fear. Fedya kissed Anatole, a quick brush on his forehead followed by a tender, lingering one against his handsome lips. Then, with a sigh, Fedya closed his eyes and dozed. His sweat dried cold as the warmth of orgasm gave way to the evening air, but neither of them wanted to move.

The sky began, slowly, to darken. Long, distorted shadows stretched across the roof. Still they didn’t move, not until Fedya felt Anatole begin to shiver in his arms.

“You should get dressed,” Fedya said, and reached for his own underclothes and trousers. He glanced at Anatole, his flawless body naked under the stars, then added, “Much as I’d love to see you like this forever.”

Anatole winked. “Keep staring and I’ll charge by the hour, eh?”

Languidly, he pulled his shirt over his shoulders and did up the buttons from the bottom. He _would_ , Fedya thought vaguely. He would put on a shirt first, leaving himself exposed to the night from the waist down. That persistent lack of common sense and decorum had never seemed so wonderful. So full of hope.

“I’ll let you break the news to Pierre that we fucked in his house,” Anatole said. “I imagine he’ll want to move.”

Fedya grinned. “Technically,” he said, “we fucked _on_ his house.”

Anatole laughed and stood to tug his trousers back over his hips. It didn’t seem to occur to him that the entire world existed just meters away. Fedya wondered whether anyone passing on the street below had seen. From this height, he reasoned, they’d notice nothing. Anatole’s body would only be a flash, lean and pale like lightning. He imagined a stranger pausing, glancing up, hearing a sound from the rooftops like an angel laughing.

They stood there together for a moment, looking back out over the city. The rose blush had faded from the skyline, and a deep indigo spread outward, pinpricked here and there with stars. They shone brighter as Fedya and Anatole stood, watching them glow. As Fedya and Anatole watched, lights began to gleam in Moscow’s windows as one house after another lit the lamps for the night. Golden flashes fighting bravely, pushing back against the dark.

“We should get back,” Fedya said.

Anatole nodded. “We should.”

Neither of them made any move to go. Before them rose the tiny ledge of the roof, and beneath it the street. The drop was no less steep than before, but neither of them felt in any danger of falling.

“I think we’ll be all right,” Anatole said.

Fedya smiled. “I think we will,” he said, and kissed Anatole to seal the promise.

Moving easily, Anatole dropped down off the roof onto the ledge, ducking back through the window. Fedya followed a little less gracefully, but supported by Anatole’s guiding hands. Then, together, Fedya still holding Anatole’s hand, they descended the stairs and made their way back into the dining-room, into the world, into life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aargh thank you all so much for reading! I was a little hesitant to post this story, but your feedback has been just a joy and a delight. Without you all, there's no way I'd have gotten my act together enough to actually finish in a reasonable span of time.
> 
> (Now maybe I should go work on the research paper I've been procrastinating on because I've been writing this fic instead? What an idea.)
> 
> As always, I adore hearing your thoughts! I only ask for rubles maybe once a year, but I ask for comments and kudos literally all the time.


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